CROCUS FIELDS

CROCUS FIELDS

Prologue

LOXLEY HALL - JUNE 1978

“Sticks and stones, Cassandra. Sticks and stones. What do you say?”

Her mam set her umbrella on the hall floor, where it stood, stretched tight like a tent, sliding water onto the tiles.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. And now it’s gone and rained on my hair and made it even more frizzier.”

As her mam pulled her rain jacket over her head, Cassie heard her sigh.

“What do they say?”

“Rat’s nest. Is that her hair or a hotel for lice? Why don’t you do something different with your hair, like brush it? If we turn her upside down, we could mop the floor with her. Why don’t you leave your pet at home?”

“I see you’ve got it all well memorized. Tell them this. Straight to their faces, Can’t you find a more interesting hobby than worrying about my hair? Then walk away.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Where do I walk to?”

“Somewhere you feel safe. Towards your friends.”

“And they call me a little Paki.”

Her mam scowled, “Well you’re not.”

Cassie peered around the hallway, avoiding her mother’s eyes. Inside the front door, on the other side from her mam’s umbrella, was a long brown box with curved wooden bands. It hadn’t been there in the morning.

“What’s the box?”

“Something of your grandfather’s. He’d better get it out of here before tomorrow.”

“What’s for tea, Mam?”

“A run around the table and a kick at each leg. Go and get your grandad if you’re so keen on knowing what’s in that there trunk.”

Cassie’s mother went into the kitchen. Cassie stayed, looking at the box. Trunk? Was it something to do with an elephant? Was Grandad collecting elephant things? She ran upstairs and knocked on his door.

“Ay up, duck. How was school?”

“What’s a trunk?”

“Now, wouldn’t you like to know?”

Cassie wondered if the box was big enough to have elephant tusks in it.

“We’ll open it downstairs, ducky. It’s too heavy for your mam and me to fetch up. Here, carry the scissors and tape and I’ll get some flat boxes.”

Cassie loved the flat boxes. Grandad opened out their wings and they rose up to collect things.

Her grandad pulled a lacy jacket from layers of crackling tissue paper. Perfect for a wedding dress. Cassie pranced around the hall, singing and circling past where he sat on the bottom step of the stairs, piling clothes on the floor. She grabbed a pair of long gloves and drew them up to her shoulders. She did another spin.

Her grandad was staring at sheets of paper. She danced towards the kitchen.

“Harriet Loxley,” he said. “Who would have dreamed it? Harriet Loxley.”

The risen-up flat-box was empty. Cassie rummaged in the trunk. Only more clothes, no elephant tusks. She seized a long scarf and twirled it over her head.

“Look Grandad! An Arab dancer!”

Her mam was watching from the kitchen door.

“Mam, look at me!”

“Very nice. Tea’s ready. What a mess! You two had better clear this all up after.”

Grandad held up a pile of paper. “Put this in the rubbish for me, me duck.”

Her mam was already striding back into the kitchen. She stopped for a second before she turned back.

“Really?”

Grandad never threw anything away.

PART ONE - CASSIE

Chapter 1

JULY 2016

Cassie’s bones were whispering to her that this time it had worked. She said, “Yes, I know, Jim, the salary cheques. Can’t someone else collect them?”

He sighed, “There are procedures, Cassie. Procedures have to be followed. It’s half of what accounting is about.”

“Leaping into new life, this baby. Part you and part me. What more mysterious result of loving? More than can be put into words. Ineffable.”

“Ineffable?” He took hold of her hand and squeezed. “I wish I could be with you, Cassie. I really do. Call me as soon as you know. If I can get away, I will.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing. Now off you go. You know what the traffic will be like.”

Cassie closed the consulting room door behind her and concentrated on the rectangle of sunlight at the end of the hall, her neck rigid.

“Mrs. Cricket, the pregnancy test is ninety pounds, please.”

Cassie stared at the shape behind the glass, the weight of the word never filling her mind and slowing down her thoughts.

The doctor had said it. Never.

“Mrs. Cricket, I’m sorry, but at forty-two the chances of successful IVF with your own eggs are one in seven and with your primary ovarian insufficiency they are much lower than that.”

Which meant never.

Jim. Jim’s name always. Despite so many corrections. Jim Cricket, who wasn’t here; who couldn’t be here because he received the pay cheques on Thursdays. And the person she’d explained that to, possibly this shadowy person, wouldn’t change the appointment.

She stood still, until the blood stopped pounding in her ears, walked the four paces to the window and whispered, “It’s Brown, Cassandra Brown, and send me a fucking invoice. You know my address.”

The rectangle of sunlight still lay ahead. Pulling her car keys from her pocket, she forced herself along the rest of the clinic’s corridor.

Back at her car, she started the engine and turned on the air conditioning. She turned her right hand palm upwards and laid it against the steering wheel and traced her forefinger across the pale skin of her inner arm, running a line from the base of her thumb to the damp creases inside her elbow. The number twenty-two blade would follow the purple mark and she would watch the skin spring aside, and she would marvel at the glistening pink ravine before it filled with blood.

Not going down that path. Jim deserved to know. She pulled her phone out of her bag and sent a message: No baby. So sorry. Bloody miserable. Need some alone time. Love. She pushed the gear stick into reverse and checked around her, telling herself what to do at each turn of her head, as if she didn’t trust herself to do it alone. She headed out of Reading and along the road towards Bracknell, towards the woods at Finchampstead.

There had been a baby, once. Her and Rafiq’s baby. Eddie. Eddie Saddiqui, born out of the shimmering colours of Rafiq’s closeness and the unknowable depth of his otherness.

She found the place easily; the bend in the road and the gap smashed through the trees, where there was now a mass of foxgloves and bracken. It took five minutes to scramble down the slope. She stopped in the same spot where she had recognized her red Fiesta lodged against the smooth grey trunk of an ancient beech. Its career down the hill had wrecked the tangled understory of rhododendron and brambles.

Twelve years ago, a hand had descended on her shoulder and an impossibly youthful voice said, “Stay here, Miss. Someone will be here to help you soon.”

A female police-officer in black leather gloves, boots and a bright yellow traffic vest suggested they sit in Cassie’s car while she questioned Cassie gently about who might be in the crashed vehicle and for how long.

“This isn’t my car. My car is…,” Cassie gulped and gasped for breath, “my car is the one down there. This is Rashmi’s car.”

“Is there anyone I can contact to be with you? Your mother, perhaps?”

Cassie looked at the woman in the seat next to her, who was black, and thought of her mother. Her mother was the last person she wanted here. She was quite capable of making some remark about it being all for the best. Now you can start afresh, Cassie. Get a husband who is like you.

“No, god no, not my mother. Rashmi. Rashmi Pandya. My friend.”

Rashmi, part friend, part mentor. Rashmi, whom she’d met in the maternity ward, whose son was a day younger than Eddie. Rashmi, whom she’d rung in a panic when Rafiq and Eddie weren’t home and Rafiq’s phone was sitting on the kitchen table alongside the note he’d left.

Gone to see how beautiful Finchampstead Ridges is in the snow.

Cassie said, “Eddie is three. He’s up at five, every morning. At the weekend, Rafiq leaves me to sleep and takes him outside, rain or shine. He takes him to the park. He takes him where they can throw balls. Rafiq, you see, can’t understand how the beautiful game of cricket is beyond a three-year-old. Eddie can just about throw a ball. He heaves it upwards and it drops from the air as if it had never received direction.”

She stopped talking. If she had got up that morning and seen the weather, she could have talked Rafiq out of driving out to Finchampstead to show Eddie the beauty of the snow on the trees.

She had said, “Rafiq never was a good driver.”

And she regretted that deeply. Why had she maligned him? The road had been icy.

She held her hands up to her eyes. They were as scratched from grabbing at brambles to slow her helter-skelter race down the steep slope as they had been twelve years ago. Today the air was throbbing with sultry July insect bustle and her blood was pricking through the skin. Soon there would be pain. Soon she would soothe the pain with warm water and salves. Soon she would feel some relief.

Friday morning, Jim started talking as soon as she opened her eyes. He must have been lying there watching her, willing her to wake up.

“We can look into this donor egg possibility the doctor brought up.”

She pushed down the pillow, leant on her elbow, and said, “I don’t understand why you don’t find the idea as awful as I do. Women being paid hundreds of thousands to provide eggs because they meet culturally imposed educational standards and conform to our society’s twisted concept of beauty. Some clinics even select on women’s height and athletic prowess, for god’s sake. Sporty, that’s good, but tall as the average man, no way. You can explore our picture database to find exactly what you are looking for. It’s market-conditioned eugenics, Jim. Why would you want our child to inherit the genes of the sort of person who would allow themselves to be sold like that?”

“I don’t know what you’ve been reading online. In America perhaps, but not here. Here donors can’t be paid more than seven hundred and fifty pounds.”

Jim ran his fingers through his hair. It was, she noticed, taking on the faded appearance that ginger hair did with age. Jim was becoming less burnished.

“So, you’ve been online too.”

“Of course I have, ever since the doctor first mentioned it. Cassie, it gives us a chance.”

“It gives you a chance. I wouldn’t be the baby’s mother. I would never see myself in our child.”

“People who’ve done this say they love their baby in exactly the same way as other parents. And we are lucky we are able to afford it. We’re a bit tight for funds right now, but we could take capital from the trust and pay it back later.”

“Christ, Jim! You know how the trust works. You’re the accountant. The trust exists for the Loxley women, in perpetuity. It’s not within my rights to break the trust.”

“Usually the beneficiaries of a trust can agree to change its terms.”

She said nothing.

He sighed, “Ok, ok, I haven’t seen the trust. And I’m not a lawyer. I’ll make it happen some other way. I’ll get the money.”

“Jim, money’s not the point. You don’t buy a child online. You don’t select a child, or even create a child. You accept a child.”

Cassie walked along the deserted hallway towards her office. The summer sun, already warm, was flowing through the tall windows and the tough yellow floor was unmarked by passing feet. Students didn’t want classes on Fridays and demonstrated the fact by failing to attend them. She had no students to face; no pace to maintain; and no persona to project. She could sit in the office, pick up one piece of paper at a time, and deal with it. When it was dealt with, it wouldn’t talk back.Being at college at seven in the morning was absurd, but far safer than staying at home. Here she had routine.

Cassie turned the corner and passed one of the cleaning staff swinging her heavy whirling machine across the floor in graceful curves. She gestured a greeting and tried the office door. It was unlocked. She was not the first, despite the early hour. Rashmi Pandya was already behind her desk.

“Good morning. How did it go?”

“Fine.”

“Cassie, you look like you walked into a brick wall.” Rashmi pulled her single, shiny black braid from its home down the centre of her back and examined its end.

“I’m fine, really.”

Cassie picked her way across the few yards to her desk, carefully stepping over the piles of folders heaped around her chair. She sat down and congratulated herself on her safe space. It had a wall behind; a wall to the side; and a narrow entry point. She had an adequate and long-lasting defence against opening herself up to Rashmi.

Cassie capitulated while Rashmi was still marching across the floor.

“It’s over, Rashmi.”

“I am so sorry.”

Cassie watched in silence as Rashmi Pandya, head of science at Reading Further Education College, and her best friend, perched her backside on the edge of her desk. The green satin of Rashmi’s skirt shone where it pulled tight, and Cassie thought, not for the first time, how she looked rounded out, rather than drained, by her responsible job and five children, one still a sixteen-year-old causing daily mayhem. Rashmi’s lips, about to open and lay down the law, were the colour of soft brown sugar and her hair had only a few veins of grey in its lush blackness.

“You need time off. Only two weeks until term ends. How many assignments do you have left to mark?”

“Paramedics, beauticians and footballers.”

“Take it easy. No comments. They won’t read them. I’ll take your A level class on Monday and shake them up before the exam.”

“Half of them won’t be there.”

“Take Monday off. That’s not a suggestion. It’s an order.”

Cassie watched her retreat to her desk.

She laid her head down on her arms.

Rashmi was the only person, apart from Jim, who knew the clinical horrors Cassie had endured. She and Jim waited six years before even approaching a doctor. Then, there were three years of timing sex; of counting sperm; of humiliating examinations and the dreaded injections. When the IVF injections started, Rashmi fixed her timetable to make it possible for her to attend clinics.

Jim was no expert with the morning and evening needle. Sometimes she felt everyone must be able to see the blue, black, and yellow stains that spread across her belly. Her colleagues had certainly been the victims of the surging, changing moods that had spread across her mind.

Cassie raised her head and said, “Rashmi, did I ever tell you about the woman in San Francisco did all her hormone injections in public, as performance art? Of course, she had a supermodel body. The needle going into her belly looked sexy. Not like my belly. That was more like sticking it into a roll of flesh pinched into a frankfurter.”

“This image is disgusting. Please, do not put this picture into my mind.”

“They refer to it as the twenty-first century way to have babies.”

And Rashmi giggled and said, “Why does it take fifty million sperm to fertilize one egg? This is a joke, Cassie, so you say…”

“I don’t know. Why does it take fifty million sperm to fertilize one egg?”

“Because they won’t ask for directions either.”

Cassie snorted, sighed and put her head back down, turning it into her elbow to get more comfortable. Rashmi wouldn’t mind if she fell asleep. She would probably only wake her up to tell her to go home.