J.P. is out of sorts with all this. He is a reluctant sort of man. He likes working the land. I pretend this drives me mad, but of course it’s the thing that keeps me sane. Tonight he takes off his clothes as though they are a trial to him, as though that shirt of his has been at him all day. He puts them into the laundry basket and slaps the lid shut. Then, naked, he gets into bed: my organic man. He closes his eyes, rolls over to kiss my shoulder, rolls back, and sleeps.
At four in the morning I look out the bathroom window and see the poor sycamore oozing sap under a scudding sky. Such greedy trees, sycamores, nothing grows in their shade. I look into the mirror and think about Gertie. The sight of her praying in the school chapel at fifteen, with those lumpy-looking white gloves that girls used to wear when they were all overcome by the Virgin Mary. I think about the little bully she married; her mother, who always had some vague symptom. Her mother’s funeral, then, later. And my own father’s funeral, later again. Shaking Gertie’s hand.
‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’
God, I hate that woman. I put my hands on the side of the sink and lean forward and close my eyes. And I think of the food I must gather for Gertie: the beautiful plump lettuces, the purple sprouting broccoli, the early beans. I think about pulling them from the earth when they are still cool with the morning; settling them into their boxes, with the sweet air trapped among their leaves. I think about how I will gather them up, and pick them over, and pack them with a little knotted sprig of rosemary and thyme. I think how Gertie will take this little bouquet, and look at it, and like it. And I sigh.
Ronan, our youngest, comes in, holding the front of his pyjamas, his face muddled with sleep. I help him go to the toilet and he says something about camels which makes me smile, about how camels hold their water for such a long time.
‘Hydroponics,’ I say to J.P. as I get back into bed. ‘Ebb and flood.’
‘You always say that,’ he says. It is nearly dawn. He might get up now, and let me sleep on. The light outside our window is undecided and we lie there, intimately awake. J.P. has heard it all before — a dream I have of water, an infinity of lettuce, row upon row of the stuff, coming out of a lake smooth as glass, so all you see is the lettuce and the reflection of the lettuce. And maybe, as I fall asleep, me also, floating in there, utterly still amidst the green.
SHAFT
As soon as I walked in, I knew he wanted to touch it. It was a small lift, just a box on a rope really. You could hear the churning of the wheel high above, and the whole thing creaked as it wound you up through the building.
I stood over to give him room — not easy when you are so big. Then, of course, I realised I hadn’t pressed the button yet, so I had to swing by him again, almost pivot, my belly like a ball between us. I was sweating already as I reached for the seventh floor.
You know those old bakelite buttons — loose, comfortable things, there’s a nice catch to them when they engage. If someone’s pushed it before you, of course, they just collapse in an empty sort of way and your finger feels a bit silly. So I always pause a little, before I hit number seven. And in that pause, I suppose, I get the feeling that this bloody box could go anywhere.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, even though there was no need for it. American. In a suit. Quite tall.
‘Oh. Sorry.’ I said it too. Well, you do, don’t you?
The button went in with a soft crunch — wherever he was going, it wasn’t to my floor. He eased back into the far corner and we waited for the doors to close.
This blasted lift. Six times a day I go up and down in this box, maybe more, waiting for the machine to make up its mind; waiting for it to finish thinking; checking the building, floor by floor. It’s so ancient — it should have those screechy trellis gates, like a murder mystery. (I should have an ash-blonde permanent wave, the American should be packing a snub little gun.) But it doesn’t. There are just these two endlessly reluctant doors of metal, that click and surge, as though to close, and then change their mind.
I gave a little social sigh — Well, here we all are — and flicked a glance his way. He was looking at my stomach, but staring at it. Well, people do. So I blinked a bit and smiled my most pregnant smile, all drifty and overwhelmed, Isn’t nature wonderful? These days, my skin smells of vegetable soup. I mean quite nice soup, but soup — you know? I tell you — reproduction, it’s a different world.
He looked up at my face then, and smiled. The doors heaved a little in their furrows and then decided against it. Very serious eyelashes. Very bedroom.
‘So. When’s the happy day then?’ he said.
As if it was any of his business. As if we had even been introduced. When you’re pregnant, you’re public property, you’re fair game. ‘Well, hello,’ they say in shops. ‘How are you today?’ It’s as though the whole world has turned American, in a way, and here was the genuine article, corn fed, free range; standing there in his nice suit and inquiring after my schedule.
‘What do you mean?’ I wanted to say. ‘I am just suffering from bloat.’ Or, ‘Who says it’s going to be happy? It might be the most miserable day of my life. I might be, for example, screaming in agony, or haemorrhaging, I might be dead.’
‘Oh.’ I looked down at my belly like I’d just realised it was there — What, this old thing?
‘Six weeks,’ I said.
‘Hey!’ he said back. Like a cheerleader. I thought he might reach out and give me a playful little punch on the arm — Go for it!
I turned and jabbed the ‘doors close’ button. At least I thought it was the ‘doors close’ button, it was actually the ‘doors open’ button — there is something so confusing about those little triangles — so the doors which were, at that exact moment, closing, caught themselves — Ooops! — and slid open again.
We looked out into the small lobby. Still empty.
‘Well, good luck!’ he said.
And he gave a little ‘haha’ laugh; rocking back on his heels a bit, while I jabbed at the other button, the correct one this time, the one where the triangles actually point towards each other, and, OK, said the doors — Now we close.
Someone got a pot of gloss paint and dickied them up, years ago. Thick paint, you can see the swirl of the brush still in it, a sort of 1970s brown. The doors meet, and sigh a little, and you look at the place where the paint has flaked. You look at the place where the painter left a hair, in a big blond S. You stand three inches away from another human being, and you think about nothing while the lift thinks about going up, or down.
Decisions decisions.
Good luck with what? The labour? The next forty years?
The lift started to rise.
‘I’ll need it,’ I said.
This building used to be a hotel. I can’t think of any other excuse, because there is dark green carpet, actual carpet, on the walls of the lift, up to what might be called the dado line. Above that, there’s mirror made of smoked glass, so that everyone in it looks yellow, or at least tanned. Actually, the light is so dim, people can look quite well, and basically you look at them checking themselves in the glass. Or you look at yourself in the glass, and they look at you, as you check yourself in the glass. Or your eyes meet in the glass. But there is very little real looking. I mean, the mirror is so hard to resist — there is very little looking that goes straight from one person across space to the other person, in the flesh as it were, as opposed to in the glass.