Of course it wasn’t all plain sailing. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that once we’d all found one another, and the baby having come safely into the world, that all we’d have to do then would be to settle down to life in our new house. And there could be no easier house to settle in, I knew that already; and they were so pleased to be here. I don’t believe we ever did discuss it in the formal sense, it was just understood by us all that we would all be living here from now on. Everything we needed (or very nearly) was here, in a way that seemed quite magical to them. I think I had stopped being astonished at how the house somehow went on providing what we needed, starting with the time and the privacy just to be our best selves. Or perhaps I had begun to take a little credit for it myself, as if the house and I worked together, or at least had begun to reflect each other. It was close to the feeling I had first had when the two Dutch students turned up. It had become personal. The house and my life now were like things I could shape in my hands, like arranging flowers, or painting, something I was creating and of which I was also a part. Steph and Michael ended up feeling the same. But the important thing to start with was that they stayed. Any other arrangement would have been unnatural. I never did quite get to hear much about the place where they’d been living, but they were certainly not in any sort of hurry to get back to it. It was at least a week before Michael went off in the van and came back with the rest of their things, none of which quite suited the new way of life. I don’t think we kept any of them except for some of Michael’s books.
No, it was the baby who worried me from the start, in a niggling way that I told myself was due to my own inexperience. And thinking it was inexperience, of course I said nothing, not wanting to start up any doubts about my not actually having had any children. I mean I don’t know what they thought of my story at that stage, but it seemed a courtesy not to challenge whatever they had decided to believe. I know new babies seem impossibly small, but Miranda was so tiny. I didn’t like to say so and her size didn’t seem to worry her parents, but I wondered all the same. On the day after she was born Steph was still in a bad way and I volunteered to change Miranda’s nappy- there were plenty, thank goodness, in the nursery- and I slipped downstairs and popped her on the kitchen scales. It was difficult! I weighed the biggest mixing bowl first and then put her in it, which she did not like. She wriggled so much I told myself that it couldn’t be a completely accurate reading. But four pounds five ounces! Still, I said nothing. Steph was only slightly built herself, so maybe the baby would just take after her. And it seemed that Miranda had arrived on the early side, so you wouldn’t expect her to be big. As long as we kept her well fed and cared for there didn’t seem anything to worry about. Babies grow, don’t they? In fact it’s all they do, really.
It was Steph who was doing the feeding. She wasn’t a natural at it though. She got very tired and cross over it and I remember she was often in tears. With Miranda bawling over her shoulder she would nag at Michael or me about getting Cow & Gate or something. There must be bottles and that in the nursery! There’s everything in there! Can’t we give her a bottle? We had to tell her there weren’t any. Miranda would get used to the feeding, I was sure of it. I mean, it was natural to take mother’s milk, and must surely be better for her. It wasn’t as if she’d ever had a bottle, was it, so why should that be any easier for her than the natural way? It seemed a reasonable argument and I really did believe it, and I could see Michael did too. We couldn’t suggest going out to buy baby milk and bottles. We both honestly thought it would be better to spend what we had building Steph up so that she could feed the baby herself.
Money. Of course, it was mainly to do with money, though at the time we convinced ourselves we were doing it for better reasons than that.
Miranda blurred Steph’s nights and days by waking her almost every hour, chewing her till she bled and vomiting up curds. She writhed and groaned in her arms when she was not actually fretting at the nipple. Steph’s right breast swelled up and became so red and sore that she could hardly bear it to be touched even by bathwater, then it grew so hard that she had to squeeze the spurting milk from it, yelping and crying with the pain and the waste of it; it was mixed with blood and serum from the cracked nipple so that she could not slip it into Miranda’s mouth from a spoon. Her temperature rose. She grew feverish and woke from wild and anxious dreams. Her heat entered the baby, who did not seem to know if she screamed for want of Steph’s milk or out of disgust for it. Steph lay beached on the soft bed, or sat for hours in cool baths to ease her breasts and the stinging from what she called her exit wound. She could only lie and hope that the burning, if it were not to stop, would just consume her altogether. At appallingly frequent intervals she would take the baby from Michael or from Jean, clamp her to the breast, and suffer. Later it seemed to her that in those weeks she cried not just in the bath or when Miranda was mauling her, but at every waking moment, even when eating, or drinking the glasses of water which were also brought to her too solicitously, and too often. Miranda’s periods of sleep were snatches of exhausted respite from what seemed her personal awareness-raising campaign at the injustice of having been born; she would wake from them freshly enraged and renewed for the fight. Steph herself felt cowed by her ferocity and at the same time enslaved to the task of appeasing it. Sometimes she cried for shame at her own inadequacy. Nobody understood. All Jean’s brightness and Michael’s doggedness were irrelevant, merely atmospheres that she sensed dimly against the background of the days and nights, as they moved about bearing trays and glasses or bringing the baby to her again. They took care of the practicalities as best they could, but there was no relief. Miranda screamed and would not feed, or she screamed and then attacked with her pitiless mouth, later sicking up most of the milk she had pulled from her weeping mother. Not once did anyone suggest calling a doctor.
When Steph’s temperature eventually fell and her infected nipple shrank and dried, she ate. She had been torn during the birth and walking was still painful, but she began to come downstairs for meals, dressed in clothes that Jean had put in the wardrobe in her bedroom. Michael had brought her few old things from the flat but she discovered she could not bear to look at them. It was Jean who sized her up and chose from her own collection the ‘youngest’ trousers and shirts that would be comfortable, though fashionless. None of it much suited her. Steph did not care.
Michael and Jean exchanged a smile when she came into the kitchen early and slightly sheepishly for breakfast one day, taking her presence as a compliment to themselves. Perhaps kindness was becoming a habit with them all, for Steph did not spoil their pleasure by saying that it was not their company she was in need of but simply more to eat. It was the smell of bacon that had brought her down, and she thought it might be easier to get a second helping or extra toast and butter if she were nearer the food.
Jean’s beautiful trays, with flowers and napkins and silver, had been getting a little short on quantity.
April
Life acquired fluency. On good days, which came more frequently, there were long stretches of peace, even glimpses of grace. The weather improved and bulbs came up all over the grass and around the garden. Jean brought in tulips and daffodils by the armload and for the first time in her life was amazed by them. How had she missed them all these years, she wondered; their colours, the clinging, yearning scent, the slippery sap and the stamens, so unbearably naked and tuned to the air that it was impossible to believe they were not receiving some strain of music too fine for human ears. She discussed with the others what vases she should use and where they would like them put, and she was pleased when one day Michael said he didn’t much mind, just whatever she thought, anywhere was fine as far as he was concerned. His mildly distracted indifference struck her as affectionate; she felt promoted. His taking her somewhat for granted confirmed not just their familiarity but also his security in their relationship, and perhaps there really was something endearing about her, something elusive that only a son could see. She hummed as she trimmed stems and filled vases, to show that her prettifying efforts were for fun and she was not being fussy and anxious. Most of the flowers went in the drawing room for Steph, who said that she might get around to doing a painting of them sometime. On days when Miranda consented to sleep (which she did more and more, and even took on a slight listlessness when awake which they all agreed was a sign that she was nice and relaxed) Steph would settle on the drawing-room sofa in the afternoon while Jean and Michael flitted about on little tasks which seemed to please them, Jean most often around the kitchen, Michael ranging more widely about the garden and outbuildings as he searched out things that needed doing.