Between Us

Between Us

Chapter 1

Basel, February

Another keening moan erupted from Julia as the next contraction tore through her. Philip’s eyes roved around the makeshift delivery room to look at anything but her. It was he who had insisted on a rental house near the hospital. She’d wanted something pretty on the Basel riverfront.

‘It'll be easier to get it to the baby window. I’d have to get a taxi otherwise,’ he said.

‘You’re right. We can’t have witnesses,’ she said, persuaded.

A child’s bedroom had seemed appropriate the day before when he got out the polythene, clamps, and scissors, piled up fresh towels, and inflated the Swiss ball. But now the collection of stuffed toys arranged on the little bed looked back at him bemused, and who could blame them? He made a move towards the fairy lights dancing across the window with some idea of fixing them. But Julia’s urgent reality claimed him back.

‘Help me....’

Struggling to contain the panic pounding at his ribs, he supported her to roll forward off the ball onto all fours. He caught the tang of her sweat in the air; this animal-woman was still his wife. As her chewed fingers clawed at the carpet dragging tracks through the pile, it struck him that he should have put the polythene down earlier. His mind hollowed out. This was nothing like the books and videos. He scraped for distant memories of their three daughters’ births. But he’d been a bystander then with the simple imperative not to faint.

His finger hovered over 112, the Swiss emergency services number. The temptation to free himself of responsibility had a magnetic pull. Fear for Julia fought with his commitment to stick to their agreement. He hesitated and her needs reclaimed him.

Through a taut grimace she said,

‘Need to push.’

His phone hit the floor with a soft thud. He grappled to shove the polythene sheeting under her knees. Julia, oblivious rocked on all fours. He proffered a back massage, but she shook him away.

‘You can do this,’ he urged.

He flicked a glance to his phone, now lying face up behind her with its siren glow. Her lipstick-pink T-shirt glared at him with rebuke. Her breathing, controlled and regular, became the rhythm of the room whilst his own breath lodged tight within him.

‘Is that the head?’ she asked, reaching down, eyes darting. Glassy beads of sweat rested on her forehead.

Though his body strained to shake, Philip braced himself and prepared to deliver Julia of the child they’d never know.

Her bellow, rich and deep, filled the room like a tolling bell. Philip flinched at the thought of the unknown neighbours, but it was no time to shush her. With Julia’s agony, the baby’s head emerged, squashed and grey-white, with furrowed brow. He supported it readying himself for the rest. The body was glistening blue marble like a statue after rain. He exhaled sharply. Relief was fleeting. He rubbed the waxy chest willing it to take a breath. Blood pulsated in his ears and the polythene rumpled as Julia shifted and yanked a towel between her legs. He rubbed the tiny ribcage harder and faster, panting in quick sharp breaths.

In those long seconds his mind was assaulted with a cascade of thoughts. All his midwifery knowledge, so diligently absorbed, had evaporated. Could you give mouth-to-mouth to a human who had never breathed? The scenario that Julia had refused to discuss forced its way in and vomit clambered up his throat. Images of a shoebox grave in frozen earth too hard for a spade filled his mind.

The grim scene dissolved when the baby let out an abrupt squawk. Colour flooded its face. Philip breathed out sharply and swallowed. Only then did he see that it was a boy. No congratulations. No elation. He could not protect himself from looking at his son, but Julia turned her head to the wall denying her gaze to the baby she had rejected months ago.

Rhythmic cat-wails, urgent and pathetic, emitted from the writhing form.

‘Hold him,’ he said passing their only son towards her. Its outsized scrotum hung like angry plums, baggy and red between string legs. She saw him for the first time. Her eyes widened.

‘Him?’

Neither of them had visualised this immediate aftermath, so intent had they been on rehearsing what was to come. Barely reaching out, she took the infant from him. The clamps and scissors rested on the nightstand. The cord was a pulsing grey rope. As he cut the rubbery tissue, the gristly crunch of it jarred in his ears. His heart was crushed by a giant fist. A nugget of shame buried in his sternum clenched at the sharp awareness that this was not the only separation the baby would experience that day. The cries bleated on, each one a new stab.

As if to emphasise that the baby was now a separate being, Julia passed it back to him and slumped exhausted against the chair letting her eyes roll into her head. The infant thrashed in his lap, its pouchy eyes still closed, its lips a livid red. Wax lodged in the creases of its fingers and, though it could not have been less important, he counted them. Unknowing, it waved its fists across its maw, its cries like claxons. Philip heard gurgling rage.

Now, a father of a son for a few hours, Philip pressed the infant to him in a bid to stop the wailing and retreated to the bathroom. He scooped warm water from the basin and let it trickle over the babe. Stilled for a moment, the infant opened its eyes: Julia’s eyes. It held his gaze with unfounded trust. Now it was Philip who cast his glance away, convinced that the boy had registered his imminent betrayal. He dabbed the soft skin dry and rubbed the fuzzy head. There was no mistaking that the hair was fox red, just like in the few colour photos of himself as an infant. Philip wrapped the boy in a towel and held him to his shoulder, his hand a protective helmet. He dropped onto the loo seat and sat glued to it. The gush of the bath drowned out all thoughts and the insistent cries dwindled. He rocked to and fro, unsure if it was to calm himself or the baby.

Julia staggered in; a white towel, rust-stained, was her makeshift skirt. For a fraction of a second, she was a stranger.

She waved bloody hands jazz-style. ‘I feel like Lady Macbeth.’

He was in no mood for her gallows humour.

‘Blood! There’s not supposed to be blood. We must get you to hospital!’

‘It’s come and gone. Don’t worry.’

‘Is it intact?’ he asked.

‘In the bucket.’

‘Is that a hint,’ she said indicating the bath, ‘Do I smell or something?’ she joked dropping the towel and ripping off her T-shirt.

He regarded her as she slid down into the water and let her hair fan out and her face float like a lily leaf as the water sloshed about her. When she closed her eyes and released a satisfied hum, he was reassured that she was not about to expire and left, lead-footed, to find the nappy. Stepping past the bucket, he tried to ignore its contents, but he could not ignore the metallic smell of blood. He wrestled the baby into its anonymous Babygro and swaddled it in a blanket.

When Julia emerged from the bath her pallor was as white as her bathrobe. He probably looked as ghostly because she reached out and caressed his cheek.

‘It’s OK. We did it. It’s alive. I’m alive. You didn’t faint,’ she said.

Philip cradled his son as if he were the finest porcelain. He was in awe of his fragile perfection, and drunk on his mousy, apple smell. The bird mouth rooted for the nipple it would never find. His heart folded and with it his resolve. He looked up to find her staring at him, her mouth slightly open, her face blanched.

‘Our son,’ was all he could utter.

A stricken look passed through her like a ripple across water. A quick frown vertical between her eyes marked her for a second and he could still see the crease of it when she said,

‘There’s no other way now,’ then, wavering, asked, ‘… is there?’

He didn’t answer. Doubt pierced him but like an automaton, he started to strap on the papoose. With the delicate cargo harboured beneath his ski jacket warm and yeasty against him, he asked her,

‘Are you sure?’

By way of an answer, Julia half unzipped his jacket. It rustled as she leaned in, and he felt her plant a kiss on the copper head. Drawing herself away, she looked up at him.

‘Are you? she asked back.

He paused. Their eyes locked. Were hers pleading with him to stay or urging him to go? His emotional churn was so great that his skin must be undulating. She held his gaze, waiting. His mouth opened with a click. Nothing came out. He turned to face the door and when he looked back at her he said,

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

She gave a weak smile and sighed. He took it as assent. Though his insides were ragged tatters, their settled plans propelled him. Leaving her standing in the middle of the sparse room, hood still up like an angelic grim reaper, he stepped out into the ebony night and drifted through his frozen breath towards the hospital.

Chapter 2

Cambridge, three months earlier

Pregnant? Now? Out of the question. Entirely outside the plan. Julia simply wouldn’t allow it; couldn’t contemplate it; hadn’t contemplated if. That was the bloody problem.

Only last week, she had been out with her gaggle of girlfriends after yoga bemoaning middle-age.

‘OK, ‘fess-up girls,’ Paula said. ‘This menopause lark ain’t no party. I need to know what else I’m in for apart from this,’ and she held her belly like a cottage loaf in front of her with both hands.

‘Lucky you Julia, you’re too young for this,’ she said.

‘’Fraid not. My mother’s came early. I bloody hope this is the only way I’m like her, but I’ve got the lot. My tits ache, I’m getting thick in the middle, moody.’

No-one contradicted her. They all howled with indignant agreement and added their own, most of which she had: fatigue, insomnia, off alcohol.

She had known she was pregnant throughout the previous wakeful night. She lay staring at the moon shadows on the ceiling and listening to the branches swaying in the wind outside her window. The baby quickened inside her assuring her of its existence before any test did. She put off ripping open the box until that morning, urging a negative result before the interview, knowing it would be positive. Even as the test stick shook in her hand and her urine tinkled down, Julia was trying to block out the unpalatable truth.

‘Interview first, then embryo,’ she said to herself.

She caught the 8.01, but only by being brusque with Philip, noticing, as she slopped coffee onto it, that he had made the French toast heart shaped. Dear Philip. She had not said goodbye properly, just a peck on the cheek and he’d pulled away when her earring speared him. A familiar panic pressed at her chest, though it was irrational to think every time you parted from someone, you would never see them again. As far as she knew, it had only happened to her once. She dialled Philip as she strutted along the pavement merging with the other commuters. No answer.

The train rushed her to London towards the future she had strived for. She tried not to bite her bottom lip. Her teeth were unbecoming enough without the addition of lipstick blotches. She would put the pregnancy right out of her mind and deal with it after the interview with Ali Conetta. She pulled out the Architecture Review magazine with the feature article on A_C_Architects. The words and images were before her, but she couldn’t read them. Flutters from her womb clamoured for attention. Rushing fields beside the train blurred and the grey faced passengers opposite swirled onto absences. The ringing in her ears overlaid the rumbling clatter of the train.

The very idea of another baby provoked an inward spasm of dread. The relentless, repeating days of keeping the girls alive, permanently underwater, kicking hard to get to the surface but never quite making it, sometimes wanting the relief of being pulled down into the welcoming deep by fronds of seaweed. Her own needs shoved aside and lost in the mire. The hours sitting at the bottom of the stairs sobbing while the twins, Bex and Hannah, screamed in their cots and Sophie tugged at her milk-stained jumper. In those years, she had struggled to find an outline distinct from that of ‘mother’. Now the dormant seed of her ambition was awakened, and a new shoot was determinedly pushing its way through the heavy earth of motherhood. This was it, her chance. She had a shape of her own again.

She tossed the magazine aside and gazed at her screen saver- a photo of the girls at Sophie’s wedding. Sophie the radiant bride, her dress demure and simple, her smile broad; Hannah in a cerise silk crop-top, belly ring sparkling above wide electric-green pants. Hannah was pulling Bex into the photo. Bex conceded that even she could not wear black at a wedding and had compromised on a navy-blue button-down shirt with matching narrow trousers and pink hair. A reluctant half-smile played on Bex’s lips. Hannah was laughing. Julia smiled back at them. She’d said,

‘Come on girls, act as if you like each other,’ to get that shot, her favourite of the day.

Her family. Complete. Completed 23 years ago. The train pulled in, jolting her out of the reverie. She took a deep breath and marched with determination towards AC_A’s offices for the third time.

Ali clacked towards her, teetering in sharp stilettos across the marble-floored foyer. Julia inhaled to her core and wished she had worn flatter shoes.

‘Julia, at last we meet. Your portfolio. Beautiful lines. So original!’

Ali was older than she appeared on the website profile, but just as striking, gamine with black hair in a sharp bob with its signature white streak. Up close Julia could see it was natural. Julia’s skittering nerves threatened to get the better of her. But they were forgotten as she was drawn into a debate with Ali on pragmatism versus form. After the years of not being listened to by men, Ali’s attention mesmerised Julia. She didn’t mention her scrapbook of press clippings and photos of Ali cut from architecture magazines, but sycophancy lapped at her edges. As the interview drew to a close, Ali said,

‘This has been such fun! Enjoy the skiing holiday. So jealous! Go to that restaurant at the bottom of the Zerotta lift. I’ll be in touch.’

She thrust her card into Julia’s hand and tip-toed to kiss her warmly on both cheeks with a smell of cinnamon and lemon. It was flattering, if confusing, to find Ali almost treating her as a friend but perhaps it meant that the job was hers. She hugged herself at the thought she could be starting there in the new year. She had agreed to a whole ski season with Philip, but that was before this. He’d understand.

Julia stepped out into the street briefly uplifted, until the adrenaline drained from her. The baby quickened inside, urgently reminding her of the clinic appointment she’d made on the train, and troubling her with a chilling thought. She squashed it down as ridiculous, scrabbling about in her mind to remember at what stage she had become aware of the butterfly somersaulting of the girls. The pressure in her head obliterated all memory of those times.

As she fell into a seat on the bus, she realised the girl opposite her was heavily pregnant. Too late to switch seats. The girl was engaged in a high-volume call.

‘Jeez Mom, I told you, they’re not into baby showers here,’ she was saying.

‘Candice is doing the cake yes.’

Laughter.

‘I’ve seen those cakes. It’s all good. I pinkie-promise Candice ain’t gonna decorate it with a baby head coming out of my coochee.’

She tried not to stare at the girl’s globe belly; she could not allow her body to become an infant’s entitlement again. Her body must be occupied by her alone if she were to have any chance at the success she craved. She pulled her scarf away from her neck, closed her eyes, and tried to make sense of her situation.

She had yearned to be an architect for as long as she could remember and yet, like an interminable car journey, she kept getting thrown onto enforced diversions. Damn her father for dying like that. Damn her mother for guilting her into giving up her place at The Mackintosh School in Glasgow. Damn Philip for saying he did not want to be mistaken for the grandpa at the school gates. Double damn Philip for refusing to have a vasectomy in case they all died. And damn 22-year-old her for assuming motherhood was a default. That girl had failed to ask whether, not when, she would have children. With arrogant naivety she had thought, How hard could it be? It turned out to be too hard.

As she neared the clinic, she crushed any doubts about a swift and secret termination. She could take some pills and spare Philip the angst that she was suffering. It was just a mistake. Every woman had a window for having babies and hers was firmly closed, rusted up even. It was a small crack that could be repaired like a chip on a windscreen.