On Your Doorstep: Perfect for those who loved Close to Home

That is how our baby grows, carried into being on a whisper.

I met a horse whisperer once. He was small and stout and wore a wide-brimmed hat with a jaunty feather in the side. To be called a horse whisperer sounded mysterious and powerful, but he said he was simply a man who understood horses. He came to us soon after we purchased Augustus – the horse had too many bad habits for us to handle alone. I’d watched him stand before Augustus, face to face and then cheek to cheek, not threatening, just empathising, reaching deep into the horse’s psyche and connecting with the rage that lay at the heart of his flailing behaviour. By the time he’d finished, Augustus was still a spirited horse but he was biddable. He’s gone from the meadow now, sold to a horse dealer. I told David he broke loose and almost knocked me to the ground. Seeing him at the gate every time I passed was too much to bear. I want amnesia.

It will happen, my whisperers promise. Trust us…believe in us…we are the whispers of what should have been.

David was reluctant at first to move from my bed, but when I told him I’d suffered some spotting, he understood. Nothing must endanger this new life we’ve created. I reassured him of my love, explained how hormones go berserk during pregnancy and lovemaking is impossible. ‘Afterwards,’ I promised him, ‘afterwards when our baby is born, everything will be different.’

When I came home from the studio on the night before he left, he asked me to sit down and talk to him. He placed his hands on my arms and sank me into a chair.

‘Be still,’ he’d said, ‘and listen to me. All this rushing around and working such late hours. Apart from our trip to Dublin, I’ve hardly seen you since I came home.’

He kissed me, his mouth seeking some response. My body clenched in protest, and I accused him of being demanding, selfish, thinking only of his own needs. How was it possible that he could not hear the terrified whine behind my bluster?

‘Why,’ he’d asked, ‘do you spurn me? Do you think I’m a beast, incapable of lying by your side without wanting to invade your body?’

I almost told him. I could feel my knees weakening, the urge to kneel before him and confess. But the whisperers moved from gentle persuasion to implacable authority and straightened my spine. I faced him down, this man whose children I carried so briefly, all five of them, and who now urge me onwards…No more…no more…no more.

He drew away from me and wished me goodnight, chastely kissing my forehead. I understand his desire to be part of my experience but this is a journey I must take alone.

The rain had stopped by the time we left the Nutmeg and shoppers were drifting back to the market stalls. A traveller sat on a blanket outside the café. She was young, twenty at most, a baby in her arms, and a dull-eyed small boy hunkered beside her. I searched in my purse for coins but Miriam went back inside to buy coffee and sandwiches for the mother, milk for the boy.

‘It’s a boy child, missus,’ the traveller said. ‘A big boy child for his fine strappin’ mother.’

Her hard, experienced eyes seemed to sear through my secret. The pavement swayed, or perhaps I stumbled, and the coins fell from my hand, rolling across the uneven surface until they were clenched in the boy’s fist.

Phyllis Lyons arrived back from the pharmacy with her mother’s medication and asked if she could get a lift home with me. Her car was being serviced and she’d missed the twice-hourly bus that runs past her house. Miriam waved and left us together, glad, I suspect, to escape to her house on the other side of Market Square.

Throughout the journey home, Phyllis talked non-stop about her mother’s ailments and her efforts to alleviate them. I stopped outside her gate and waited for her to leave the car.

‘Come in and say hello to Mammy,’ she said. ‘She loves the bit of company.’

I stared at the grey lace curtains on the front window. Her mother would have been watching us, stooped on her Zimmer frame. Inside, the air would be stale and smoky.

‘I’m expecting a call from David,’ I said, and Phyllis nodded, as if my excuse echoed all the others she’d ever heard.

She stepped from the car and walked around the side of her house, squeezing her stocky figure past the tractor. Farming her few acres and looking after her mother…it can’t be an easy life but she accepts it without complaint.

I turned down the lane and drove into the grey arms of Rockrose. I locked the front door behind me. Such relief, being alone again, able to breathe, to open my waistband, to allow the silence to settle until only the whisperers were audible.

I speak to women all the time. They look at my bump and confide in me. One woman told me she’d never once, during the nine months of her pregnancy, felt her baby move. He’s eighteen years old now, on a track and field scholarship in the United States. Another woman was told by her gynaecologist that he could not detect her baby’s heartbeat. That night she felt the first fluttering of life in her womb. Put a group of women together and they’ll tell stories that mystify the medical profession.

Carla Kelly writes about them in her pregnancy diary. The happy, clappy stories about babies who kick and jog and elbow their way towards birth. I sent her a letter shortly after that night. I asked her how it was possible to keep hoping when the womb rejects the dream. An anonymous letter, of course. She could not deal with my story. She passed my letter on to Alyssa Faye for her advice column. As a psychologist, Alyssa Faye believes she has a deeper understanding of the human psyche than the average journalist. Human suffering is grist to her mill. For three weeks she analysed my miscarriages, analysed my head, analysed my emotions. I did not write my story to pad her column. I wanted to see if Carla Kelly could understand, empathise. I got my answer.

Last week in Dublin, I saw her in Brown Thomas with her husband. At least I assume that’s who it was. He stays out of her limelight but she held his arm in a way that suggested he was her rock. They were looking at baby clothes. I followed them from the department store and up to the top of Grafton Street. The flower sellers were busy. Birds of paradise flamed against white chrysanthemums and tightly coiled rosebuds jutted like spears from overflowing buckets. She bought the roses and continued onwards. I lost sight of them when they entered the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. I probably could have found her. She’s tall and distinctive enough to stand out from the crowd but I was too weak to move any further. I sat down in a coffee bar and asked for a glass of water. The waitress had the experienced eyes of an older woman counting months. She brought the water sharply and asked if I’d like her to call a taxi.

‘You think it’ll never end,’ she said. ‘Especially the last months. But it does and then you’ll know all about it.’

She spoke with relish, they all do, warning of impending chaos and tiny impetuous demands that will turn my life upside down.

The taxi came shortly afterwards. I caught a last glimpse of Carla Kelly and her husband as I was leaving. They were laughing at something one had said to the other. Her head was thrown back, her hand covering her mouth, as if her laughter was a wild thing she must contain. It’s a long time since I laughed that way. Had I ever? I must have, especially in the early days with David. Now I laugh on cue. It sounds natural, spontaneous, even contagious. In public relations, where it’s necessary to flatter and admire, I have acquired certain skills. I lean on them now but, from time to time, they slip. Then all I have to do is touch my stomach. Small gestures create an easily translatable language that gives me leave to be tired, anxious, irritable, uncomfortable and, occasionally, irrational.

Was it irrational to follow Carla Kelly that day? Of course it was. I realise that now but she is the face of Anticipation, taunting, flaunting; telling us it’s easy, so easy and natural to carry a baby in the womb for nine dangerous months.

I too used to keep a diary. I made the last entry when I was sixteen years old. Hard to believe that’s twenty-three years ago. I was pregnant then, eight months gone, on the final stretch, so to speak. And on the verge of becoming a teenage statistic. I lost my boy in March, gone before he had time to draw breath. Lots of blank pages afterwards. The world had become a greyer place, not worth recording. Nothing left for me except my scans and a whisper of what might have been.

‘You’ve had a lucky escape,’ my father said when I was discharged from hospital. ‘Best thing you can do is get on with your life and forget it ever happened.’ He’d taken care of everything and discouraged me from visiting the Angels’ plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. It’s such a poignant place to visit – that treasured, communal space where the tiny ones rest together.

‘It’s a new beginning for all of us,’ he said. ‘No looking back.’ My mother was dead by then and he was about to be married again. He’d changed from the grim, dead-eyed man I used to know. His face was plumper and he laughed easily, joyously. I would look at Tessa and wonder how such a small, insignificant woman with rimless glasses and a slight stammer when she was nervous had wrought such a change in him.

I didn’t blame him for not wanting to begin his married life with a troubled teenager and her baby. I just wished he hadn’t looked so relieved, so determined to obliterate my experience. But it never was obliterated, just lightly buried…like my boy. I held on to my diary, kept it safe each time I moved, but I never had any inclination to read it until after that night in the cottage. Funny experience…rediscovering the young me. I was on a wild carousal all right, and heading in only one direction.

Now I’m filling those blank pages. Dates don’t matter. Time is suspended. Writing about it helps. Otherwise my mind is frantic, thoughts running like ants beneath an upturned stone. How did I work through that wall of pain? There has to be a reason…has to be. Three months have passed since then yet the memory clings to my senses. I hear the clunk and clank of a spade, smell the dank, uncovered earth. I see a small bundle resting in that narrow cleft. I feel the clay beneath my nails, the briars tearing my legs, the polka-dot sting of nettles on my skin. And the taste that remains with me is bile, bitter gall.

It’s time to close my diary and try to sleep. Close it now and silence the whisperers. Close these musty pages and trap the future as it waits in anticipation.

Chapter Three

Carla

October 1993

Carla Kelly held her hands upwards to receive the wedding dress. Ivory silk overlaid with lace billowed across her shoulders before settling over the defined bump of her stomach. A beautician moved forward to brush blusher across her cheeks and sweep mascara over her eyelashes. One of the dressers briskly corseted Lizzy Carr into the black Goth wedding dress. Her feet were already booted in aggressive spiky heels. A slash of black lipstick emphasised her masklike white face. In contrast, Carla’s make-up was a delicate blending of peach and gold.

She bowed her head as a hairstylist switched off the hairdryer and rippled his hands through her hair, working it with his fingers until it tumbled in dishevelled strands to her shoulders. He clipped an ivory wisp of feathers into place and stood back to check the effect.

Lizzy was handed a bouquet of black roses with one red rose in the centre. Her heavy eye make-up emphasised her emaciated appearance while Carla, carrying a bouquet of orchids sprigged with lily of the valley, looked dewy, fecund, feminine. The backstage photographers clicked around them until Raine signalled at the models to prepare for their entrance.

Lizzy strutted forward into the light and headed towards the foot of the catwalk. She paused, waited for Carla’s entrance. The audience gasped, then laughed and applauded as Carla, sexy and pregnant, opened herself to the vibrating music, the piercing strobes, the lens of the cameras stripping her layer by layer as she glided towards the photographers. They called her name. This way, Carla! That way! The other way! At the foot of the catwalk, she stood with Lizzy and allowed the audience to absorb the contrast. Then they separated, each move choreographed, each inch of space worked to full advantage. Carla smiled and turned. From behind, she looked like the other models. No weight on her bottom, ankles still slender. The fashion journalists scribbled, the flash of cameras dazzled. This was Raine’s most ambitious designer collection to date – and the introduction of the Anticipation wedding dress. Tomorrow the dress would feature on the front pages of the newspapers and Raine, delighted with the publicity, would laugh when the inevitable calls were made to talk radio complaining about pregnant brides glamorising carnal knowledge.

The wedding dress swirled around Carla as the music quickened and the fashion show built to a finale. The other models emerged from behind the screens to sashay down the catwalk and form a guard of honour. They clapped Raine forward to meet her audience. The applause increased as she bowed, grinned self-consciously, longing to be backstage again, organising everything and everyone.

Carla changed into a pair of Anticipation stretch jeans and a midnight-blue top. She had enjoyed her time as the face, or – to be more accurate – the belly of Anticipation, but she was growing tired of the constant publicity.

The baby moved, a gentle jog of heel and elbow that never failed to delight her. She did not know if she carried a boy or a girl, preferring, like Robert, to wait. Life was a series of changes, of adjustments, and the biggest adjustment would take place in three weeks’ time. Outside in the auditorium, chair seats snapped back. Voices faded as the audience departed. She emerged from a side door and walked down the empty catwalk. The cleaners had moved in and were removing discarded programmes and press releases. The sound engineer grinned across at her as he packed his equipment and wished her goodnight.

In the ladies’ she breathed in the scent of potpourri and tried to imagine a time when she would not feel the constant pressure on her bladder. A woman, heavily pregnant and wearing a distinctive Anticipation top, emerged from one of the cubicles.

‘Good show.’ She smiled through the mirror at Carla. ‘I particularly liked the wedding dress.’

‘So did the photographers.’ Carla laughed and held her hands under the tap. ‘I’m still hallucinating from the flashes.’

The woman ran a comb through her short, spiky hair. Studded earrings glistened on her earlobes. ‘It’s been a long time, Carla,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

Startled, Carla paused as she was about to dry her hands. ‘Do we know each other?’

‘I’m Sue Sheehan,’ she replied. ‘At least, I was before I married. I used to work for Edward Carter.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you.’ The scent of potpourri breathed sweetly into the space between them. Carla swallowed a hot rush of nausea. Since her pregnancy, her sense of smell always seemed more acute at night.

‘Like I said, a long time ago. Ten years at least.’ Sue Sheehan tilted her chin, as if checking for any sag underneath. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she had a slim face, her features emphasised by her boyish haircut. Her complexion was smooth, almost waxy, and Carla was suddenly reminded of a doll, an asexual doll with a blue unflinching gaze. Sue blinked and the impression was immediately dispelled. Carla struggled to separate her from the brashly confident team of women who had surrounded Edward Carter in those days. They all had that look, tight haircuts and sharp shoulders, their rippling blouses and pert breasts defining their femininity. She must be in her mid-thirties now, Carla speculated, or even older, if she had been one of the senior executives in Carter and Kay Public Relations.

‘Do you still work in public relations?’ Carla removed a tube of lipstick from her bag. Her hand remained steady as she applied it to her lips.

‘Not since my marriage,’ Sue replied. ‘I work in the craft industry now. Marketing.’

‘That sounds interesting.’

‘Yes, indeed it is. Do you ever see Edward these days?’

‘No.’ Carla snapped her handbag closed and placed it under her arm. ‘Apart from on the television, of course. Impossible to miss him.’

‘Yes…he always had a way with words. When is your baby due?’

‘Mid-November, or thereabouts. My gynaey says it’s common to go over time on the first though. What about you?’

‘Around the same time. Like you say, hard to tell with the first.’ Sue glanced at her watch. ‘My step-mother’s waiting for me in the bar. It’s been nice meeting you again.’

‘You too, Sue. Good luck with the birth.’

‘Yes. I can’t wait until all this is over.’ She leaned against the counter, as if her weight was suddenly too heavy to carry.

‘Are you all right?’ Concerned, Carla leaned forward but Sue straightened, moved out of reach.

‘I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.’

They walked together to the bar where Raine was waiting for Carla.

‘Well done,’ Raine said as Carla tried to perch on a high stool beside her with as much dignity as possible. ‘I’ve already been interviewed by three journalists and asked if my wedding dress is meant to endorse sex before marriage.’

‘Mmmm…sounds like you’ll have the moral majority on your back tomorrow.’

Raine laughed. ‘Bring them on,’ she said. ‘Are you coming to Sheen’s?’

Carla shook her head. ‘Do you mind if I take a rain check and head straight home? I’m whacked.’

‘Not at all. I’m tired myself but I need to sweet-talk the buyers. Is my bro skulking in dark corners tonight?’

‘He should be home by now. How’s Gillian?’

Raine’s smile faded. ‘She’s good. Not much energy though. That last chemo session was tough.’

‘Tell her I’ll drop in tomorrow.’

‘Will do.’ Raine leaned forward and patted Carla’s stomach. ‘Night night, little one. Lay off the football for tonight and give your mum a chance to sleep. She’s had a busy day.’

Across the lounge, Sue Sheehan had settled awkwardly into a deep armchair beside a slight woman with glasses. Carla felt a fleeting sympathy as she imagined her difficulty when the time came to get up again. All she seemed to notice nowadays were women at the same advanced stage as herself.

Outside the hotel, she hailed a taxi. Lizzy Carr, in jeans and a puffa jacket, all traces of her Goth persona removed, waved as she ran down the hotel steps. She was followed by two other models, who were also heading to Sheen’s on the Green. For an instant Carla was tempted to follow but then a taxi driver pulled up and she stepped into the taxi’s dark interior.

In the company of models, Carla moved in an assured world where she did not have to apologise for being tall. No more cramped knees from bending to listen to others. No more enduring jokes about giraffe necks or being asked if it was cold up there. Her face, attractive but not beautiful, could be moulded to define a mood, an emotion, an atmosphere. The perfect face, declared the scout who had approached her on Grafton Street when she was sixteen and persuaded her to consider the catwalk for a career. She had acquired the poise and confidence to stand aloof from conversations and discovered that such indifference made people strain upwards so that they could hear what she had to say. But with Robert Gardner, everything was mouth to mouth, eye level to eye level.

He was waiting for her when she arrived home.

‘So, how did it go?’ he asked and drew her down on his knee. He smelled of soap and shampoo. Nothing about his appearance suggested that he had spent his day working on the grim and secretive side of the city streets.

‘The wedding dress was the highlight. I wanted to get married all over again.’

‘That could be arranged,’ Robert said. ‘Only one stipulation. No change of groom.’

‘As if I would.’ She kissed him but was unable to prevent a yawn escaping.

‘So much for my sex appeal.’ Robert eased her to the floor. ‘Come on. It’s way past your bedtime.’

She leaned heavily on his arm as they left the living room. She was glad of his height, his strong arms. During the last week, she had become aware of a slight listing movement when she walked. They would have a tall child. No problem if it was a boy but for a girl, Carla thought, remembering her own lanky teenage years, maybe not so good.

In bed, they spooned against each other and drifted towards sleep. One of them, or perhaps both, stirred with lazy desire and Robert’s arms tightened around her. Their lovemaking was passionate but gentle. She moaned softly into the pillow and their baby moved. Robert felt the rippling sensation beneath his fingers and, suddenly nervous, held back until, responding to her touch, he entered her slowly from behind. She clenched him tightly inside her, her energy carrying them swiftly over the edge of desire.

Afterwards, still in the same coiled position, she tried to sleep. Her leg cramped and the baby’s elbows seemed wedged under her ribcage. Robert turned, slapped the pillow without waking, and sank his head deeper into it. The room was cold, the central heating off. She pulled on a towelling dressing gown and tied the belt below her stomach. She paused before a full-length mirror and smiled at her bearlike appearance. If the photographers could see her now, there would be a very different photograph on the front of the tabloids tomorrow.

Downstairs, she entered her compact office. Once, rooms such as these had served as dens for husbands who smoked pipes in comfort and isolated themselves from the daily domestic routine. She sifted through the latest batch of letters, answered a few and chose the ones she would use in her column. Shortly before meeting Robert, she had enrolled in a media studies course, fitting her lectures around her modelling assignments. She now had her degree and a regular column in Weekend Flair, a Sunday newspaper supplement magazine. Carla was under no illusions that the reason she had been approached by the editor had more to do with her Anticipation profile than her media degree. But the number of letters kept rising from women seeking advice on morning sickness and weird hunger urges. Some letters amused her, others were so filled with pain and frustration that she shrank from answering them in her column, aware of her own inexperience. In such instances she passed them on to Alyssa Faye.

She was also beginning to receive commissions from other magazines. The feature in Pizzazz was excellent. She picked up the celebrity magazine from her desk and flicked through the pages until she came to the ‘before and after’ feature she had written about the refurbishment of their end-of-terrace Georgian house. When the alterations had first begun, she had taken photographs of the resulting chaos and these photographs had been juxtaposed against a photoshoot of the finished results. So far, she had not shown the magazine to Robert; the memory of the row that followed her decision to write the feature in the first place was still fresh in her mind.

‘Absolutely no way,’ he had declared when he heard that a photographer intended photographing each room in their house. ‘I’ve no intention of allowing our lives to feature in some cheap, pretentious magazine.’

‘Cheap?’ Carla, used to having the camera trained on her, had been astonished by his reaction. ‘There’s nothing cheap about Pizzazz.’

‘The title says it all,’ he declared. ‘“Pizzazz”. How could you possibly want us to feature in such a vacuous publication?’

‘It’s not vacuous and everyone wants to feature in it.’

‘Everyone?’ He scoffed. ‘Who the hell is everyone?’

‘It’s for Raine’s sake.’ She had changed direction, aware of how shallow she sounded, or rather, she thought, how shallow he had made her sound. ‘She’s invested everything in her publicity campaign. This is another opportunity to promote Anticipation.’