Keeping Secrets (10 page)

‘What?'

‘I'm pregnant. With twins!'

‘Good heavens,' said Hilda. ‘Good God.'

‘I know,' said Fanny. ‘I've been feeling simply grim, but it's getting better. Anyway, come about seven, and I'll give you a blow-by-blow account of every developmental stage since conception and my reactions thereto.' She sounded warmer and more light-hearted than Hilda had heard her for years. ‘And don't bother to bring a bottle, I'm touching nothing but mineral water.'

‘What about smoking?'

‘Given up! A new and reformed Fanny. I'd better go now, Alan's honking, I can hear him. Bye!'

Slowly Hilda put down the phone. From a frame next to the photograph of her parents Hettie smiled back at her, clear-eyed, smooth-skinned, showing six teeth. Hilda looked at her, and then she got up and went out to do her weekend shopping.

The summer passed. During the weeks of July Hilda found that

she missed not only Stephen but Alice – or, more accurately, Hettie.

She realised that because of her she was conscious of time passing in a way she had never been before, that she was missing moments which would never come again. Returning from her holiday in Wales in the first week of August, she found amongst the mail on the walnut table a postcard from Alice and Tony, on holiday in the Lakes. It was brief – cottage stayed in, places visited – but it ended with an invitation to come over soon. There was no letter from Stephen. Hilda greeted Anya flatly, picked up her suitcase and climbed the stairs; when she had unpacked she telephoned Alice and was answered by Hettie.

‘Hello.'

‘Hello, Hettie! This is Hilda. How are you?'

There was a silence, and much breathing. Alice came on the line.

‘Doesn't Hettie sound grown-up?' said Hilda. ‘Thanks so much for your card.'

‘That's all right.' Alice sounded wary. ‘How are you?'

‘Fine. I've just come back from Wales. I was thinking perhaps we could meet.'

‘When would you like to come? We've had the builders in, it's a bit chaotic.'

‘I think it's your turn to come here,' said Hilda, unaware that she sounded as if she was issuing not an invitation but a command. ‘Why don't you all come over on Sunday? We can take Hettie down to Anya's garden. About one? Good, look forward to it.' And she put down the phone and dutifully read through her mail. Why haven't you written? she asked Stephen.
Why
haven't you? Not even a card. Is that so much to ask?

Alice and Tony and Hettie came to lunch; they all kissed warmly, and no mention was made of their last encounter. Alice sat at the table with Hettie on her lap, looking tranquil and content; Hilda poured wine, and said: ‘You're all looking very well, I must say; you must have had wonderful weather.'

‘We did,' said Tony. ‘How was Wales?'

‘Wet, actually.' She raised her glass. ‘Cheers.'

‘Cheers,' said Alice, and took a sip. ‘You haven't got any mineral water, have you?'

Hilda put down her glass and looked at her, and Alice laughed, as beautiful as she had been when she was expecting Hettie: serene,

radiant even.

That night Hilda sat at her desk and wrote Stephen a letter. It was ten when she began and after midnight when she finished. She tore it into fierce tiny pieces and went to run a bath.

She lay in it for a long time, swishing the water with her long slim feet. A daughter? she thought. A daughter.

She summoned up a tall grave girl with plaits, and coloured tights, something like Hettie but older, ten or eleven, a clever girl. She pictured them reading together, making things, going to the cinema on wet Saturday afternoons. Stephen would visit them, as he visited Hilda now, but they would manage without him, contained, companionable.

Alice had the new baby, a cross-looking girl who cried a lot. Hilda, like Hettie, found new Annie, and Alice's absorption in her, tiresome – and yet, and yet. From the first steps into fantasy there gradually, to her surprise, came a longing, which grew.

Alice asked her to babysit, while they went out to dinner with one of Tony's partners. ‘We can take Annie anywhere at this age,' she said, ‘but I don't like dragging Hettie out in the evenings. She's so fond of you, Hilda, I know she'd settle. Would you mind?'

Hilda was aware that this invitation constituted an act of generosity unthinkable before Annie. With one baby Alice's happiness had, it seemed, been precarious, easily threatened; with two she was self-assured, at ease.

‘I'd love to,' she said.

She put Hettie to bed after her bath, tucking her up in clean pyjamas; she read her a story about Spot the Dog. ‘Goodnight,' she said, kissing her, and went to the door, leaving it open.

‘I want Mummy,' said Hettie.

‘Mummy will be back soon, you go to sleep now.'

And Hettie did: as easily, it seemed, as when Alice was there. Hilda went downstairs again, and put away the toys. She sat watching television in the comfortable sitting room, and wondered anew that Alice, who used to be so desperate and unhinged, could have found such contentment. After a while she went quietly upstairs again, to check on Hettie. She was fast asleep, mouth a little open, arms flung back on the pillow like a baby. Hilda bent down, and brushed back the thick fringe of dark hair from the round clear forehead; she leaned over and kissed her, once, twice, and went downstairs again.

I thought I was different from everyone else, she said to herself, making coffee in the airy, extended kitchen. It seems I am much the same. She took out milk from the fridge, filled with Munch Bunch yoghurts and fish fingers. Was this what Alice had felt, this longing, this yearning? And Fanny, now basking with fat twin boys and a nanny? She closed the fridge door and took her coffee back to the sitting room, turning the television low, in case it woke Hettie.

Was this what Stephen's wife had felt like, before she had Jonathan? Sitting in front of
Panorama
, taking in nothing, Hilda began for the first time to wonder why there had been no more babies for Miriam, whose existence, and life with Stephen, she still preferred not to think about. She wondered, too, what Miriam and Jonathan did with themselves, on the rare weekends when Stephen was not with them in Norfolk but here with her in London. And as she had pictured herself with a companionable daughter, she began now to see Miriam and her son, peacefully at home in their house in the country, having supper together, chatting easily about the day's events. Miriam, whatever else, need never be alone with a photograph.

On those rare Sundays when Stephen was down, he and Hilda sometimes went walking on Hampstead Heath and sometimes in Waterlow Park, where you could have lunch in a cramped room overlooking the rose garden. It was always full of families, beautifully dressed north-London parents asking their over-educated children to behave. ‘And then you can run about as much as you like.' Hilda and Stephen sat at a table for two by the window, holding hands.

On a late autumn Sunday in 1986, they had paid the bill and were walking outside arm in arm towards the lake; Yellow leaves fell slowly from the willow trees and floated across the shining blackness of the water. At the railings, toddlers and children threw down bread to the ducks; beyond the trees at the edge of the park was the Whittington Hospital, where Hettie and Annie had been born. Hilda pointed it out, casually, and made her tentative proposal.

‘No,' said Stephen, and drew his arm away.

‘But I can manage by myself,' said Hilda, filled with certainty. ‘You know what I'm like, I'll get it all organised – it doesn't have to disrupt your life, I promise.'

Stephen shook his head. ‘You don't know what you're talking about.'

She bit her lip, not wanting to quarrel. From words let drop she understood that Miriam and Stephen quarrelled, or used to. He had moved away from her, and was walking beneath the trees on the muddy path round the lake. Coming towards him, a little girl slipped, and fell.

‘Whoops.' He bent down to help her up, handing her to her parents as they drew near. They thanked him, smiling, picking her up and letting him walk past. A daughter, thought Hilda again, watching.

‘Wouldn't you like a little girl?' she said when she caught up with him.

He frowned, shaking his head. ‘I hope you're not serious about this.'

‘I am. I think I am.'

It was getting cold; she turned up the collar of her navy coat and walked with her hands in her pockets. Stephen was silent. Then he said: ‘It isn't fair on you, it isn't right. You should be with someone else, someone who can give you these things.'

‘What things? I only want one thing. And I don't want anyone else, I want you. I want your child. It's the only thing I've ever asked of you.' She spoke these words looking straight ahead, unable to say them to his face in case she started to get shrill, or cry.

‘I'm sorry,' said Stephen. ‘I'm sorry.'

Over the two years that followed there were more conversations like this – in parks, in restaurants, in bed. I could do it without him knowing, thought Hilda, I could come off the Pill. But she couldn't bring herself to do that – to deceive him, when she had asked for honesty; to present him with it, like a blow in the face. She left it for a couple of months, then asked again. It was June, warm and sunny; next month, as usual, Stephen was going on holiday with his family.

‘Please,' she said, ‘please.'

Anya was out; they were sitting in her garden, having tea. In an hour, after two days in London, Stephen was going back to Norfolk; it might be September before they saw each other again. Hilda fiddled with a teaspoon, her eyes fixed on the knots in the table. Birds sang in the trees.

Stephen, as had become the way of things, said nothing, letting her talk. There was a silence, which he did not break.

Hilda said: ‘If you don't say yes, I'm going to finish it.' She looked at him quickly. ‘I mean it. Forgive me.'

‘There's nothing to forgive you for,' said Stephen. ‘I understand.' He gave a long sigh. ‘I'll think about it. I'll write.'

Hilda spent the summer watching for the post. She drew up plans for a community course in the autumn for volunteer literacy teachers, and she visited her friends in Wales. There was no letter from Stephen waiting when she got back. There was no choir, either, and she missed it. She visited Alice and the children, and Fanny and the children, and a colleague from work who was on maternity leave. She went to the theatre with Anya and her daughter, who visited every summer, and sat out in the garden with them when it was fine. She did all this mechanically, her days making an arc of hope and disappointment between the postman's visits, and slept badly, waking in the dead of night and staying awake, tossing between the alternatives of Stephen and no Stephen; Stephen and no child; child and no Stephen; no child; no Stephen, nothing.

The letter came in the last week of August, and she read it sitting at her desk by the open window. He missed her, he thought about her often, he had tried to phone her twice, from the callbox in the village, but couldn't get through.

I wish I could be more help to you, could say more easily the things you want me to say. I wish everything was different. I have thought and thought about what you want, and, now it has happened, how surprised I am. Dearest Hilda, I have always loved what vulnerability you have allowed me to see in you all the more because you have always been so independent, so involved in your work, and aware of worlds outside your own. This is unlike Miriam, and unlike, if I have understood you, your sister. It's what attracted me from the beginning, and it's one of the reasons I've always wanted everything to stay the same between us, for there to be no more complications than there are already.

There are other reasons, which have no place in this letter, which have nothing to do with us, and which I am not going to discuss because I'm sure you would not want me to.

And yet
–
not just because I don't want to lose you
–
I want to give you what you want.

I am writing this out on the terrace, overlooking the valley. It's eight o'clock, still very warm, and there are bats squeaking in and out of the bam behind the house. I wish you were here. I love you. I hope I'll always love you.

Dear Hilda, if after reading this, and knowing all my reservations, you still feel sure that you want to go ahead, then: yes.

Hilda put down the letter. She looked out over the square, filled, as usual on summer nights, with children on bicycles, whooping and calling. She saw them, but saw also the terrace outside an old Italian farmhouse, shaded by olive trees as the sun went down. Somewhere inside, in a hazy, unimagined place, were Miriam and Jonathan, who had not only Stephen, but each other. Outside on the terrace, he was sitting at a table, writing this letter, missing and wanting her.

I'm sure, she thought, picking up the pages again, and holding them to her face. I've never been so sure of anything.

Last night Hilda dreamed she was walking up the path to Stephen's house, where she had never been, although he had described it: long and low, set back from a lane. She walked in her dream down the path to his studio at the end of the garden.

‘Stephen?' She knocked on the door. ‘Stephen?' She pushed the door open, and saw him at his drawing board. He turned and said: ‘Hilda? What are you doing here?' – as if there could be no possible reason why she should be there, interrupting his work.

She woke and lay, breathing shallowly, listening to the first murmurs of sparrows and starlings, trying to stop the dream from fading. What else might Stephen have gone on to say? How could he have been so bemused, speaking as if to a stranger?

The house was quiet. Last night she had fallen asleep listening to the rain pattering lightly on to the window boxes, then falling fast, drenching the garden and tall trees. She turned over, and looked at the thin strip of dull grey light at the top of the curtains. On Sunday mornings, when it was fine, Anya was up early, unbolting the doors to the garden, taking her coffee and the papers outside before going off to Mass.