Vacant Possession Part 12

"But I think I mean coincidence as a force, as an organising principle if you like, as an alternative set of laws to the ones we usually go by."

"Oh, Jung," said the vicar. "Where's a pencil? I see, so I put this little tick in here...Synchronicity, eh? The old acausal connecting principle. Arthur Koestler, old J. W. Dunne. An Experiment with Time."

"Yes, I know all that. But what do you think of it?"

"Murky waters," said the vicar. He took his pipe out of his mouth and indicated with it; Hermione did not allow him tobacco. "Look here, let's pinpoint this, Colin. What exactly is it that you're asking me?"

"I don't know. Please, Claire, no more tea. My life seems to be falling apart, or rather-well, reorganising itself on some new principle entirely."

"For instance?"

"Oh, you know how it is. You have hopes, they're disappointed. You put the past behind you, find a modus vivendi. Suddenly it's under threat. The past seems to be the present. I look at the faces about me, some familiar, some not so familiar, and I imagine I can see echoes-shadows, I suppose you'd say-of other faces. The air seems to be full of allusions. I look at people and I imagine them to be thinking all sorts of things. I don't know whether it's reasonable or not."

"I wish you could give me a more concrete example."

"Cup number 27," said Claire. "The milk's smelling a bit funny again, never mind."

"Well, all this about my mother...it's as if she's come back from the dead. It's so unnatural to see somebody sit up like that and speak for the first time in years...it's deeply sinister, it's predictive, that's what I feel."

"Predictive of what?"

"I don't know. I wish I did know, if I knew I could prepare us for it. Our lives have been quite calm, all considered, for the past ten years, as calm as they can ever be when there's a young family growing up.... But now there's something hanging over us."

The vicar smiled; comfortable little pads, like ha.s.socks, appeared beneath his chilly eyes. "Oh, come now, Colin. A touch melodramatic, if you don't mind my saying so."

"Things happen...they seem to have meaning, but they don't. A while ago I was mowing the front lawn. It was a lovely day. I was enjoying myself. Suddenly there was a set of teeth staring up at me."

"Teeth," the vicar said. "Human teeth, Colin?"

"Yes, human teeth. Claire, I can't drink this. The milk's off."

Claire burst into tears. "You're supposed to put down for the tea, not the milk. How can I get to fifty cups if n.o.body will drink it?"

The vicar said, "I'm afraid it sounds like a cla.s.sic case of...something unpleasant."

"I'm glad you agree," Colin said.

"So have you thought of, you know, seeing someone? A chap?"

Suzanne phoned up Jim's house. Her heart fluttered wildly when she heard the ringing tone. There was a dull pain in the pit of her stomach, her throat was closed and aching. She wrapped her hand so tightly round the receiver that the nails turned white. All day she had been steeling herself to make the call. Again and again she had pictured it, rehea.r.s.ed it in her mind. To make it easier for herself she had invented some superst.i.tions and pegged them around her fear. I shall let it ring twenty times, and if after twenty times she does not answer I will be reprieved, and I can put the phone down with a clearer mind because it will be a signal that ringing her was not the right thing to do.

Between ring twelve and ring thirteen, the baby has grown a little, added a few cells to the person it will be. She sees herself relaxing her grip, replacing the receiver, walking away and out of the room to climb the stairs and lie on her bed. She closes her eyes. At the nineteenth ring, the phone is answered.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Her voice sticks in her throat; comes out as a shrill little gasp. "Is that Isabel Ryan?"

"Yes, who's that?"

"Don't you know who I am?"

"I'm afraid not. Who are you?"

"It's Suzanne Sidney."

There was a long pause. She had expected it. She waited. There was no answer, but she had not heard the receiver replaced. Perhaps she had laid it quietly on a table and gone away. She could not imagine Jim's house. He had never described it. She did not know where the phone was, in the living room or in the hall; or perhaps Mrs. Ryan was lying on her bed, talking over an extension, and the receiver now suffocated in Jim's pillow. But somehow she sensed that Mrs. Ryan was still there; breathing, breathing quietly, gathering her wits. When the silence had gone on for a long time she said, "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes." The woman's voice sounded very far away. "Yes, I remember, I know who you are."

Suzanne waited. Then she said, "I think we ought to meet."

"You want us to meet? Why?"

"I should have thought it was obvious. We have things to talk about."

"I can't imagine what things. Suzanne, how old are you now?"

"I'm eighteen. Don't you know?"

"I couldn't remember. I'm not sure that I ever knew your age exactly."

"What do you know about me?"

"Not much."

"Aren't you curious?"

"Suzanne, is something wrong?"

"I'm pregnant."

"I see, and are you...distressed about that?"

Mrs. Ryan's voice had a strangely detached, professional note; as if the whole thing had nothing to do with her. What a cold woman she must be, Suzanne thought. Everything Jim has said is true.

"No, I'm not distressed." She licked her dry lips, tasting their salt. "I'm rather proud, actually. I just need to talk the situation out with you."

"Well...that's all right, I suppose." She sounded puzzled. "Have you talked to other people about this? Your father?"

"Oh, he thinks I should have an abortion. n.o.body seems to understand."

"You certainly should have proper counselling before you make your decision."

"I want to meet you. Alone, or all three of us, it doesn't matter. I think we ought to talk this out."

"Suzanne-no, calm down now-I can't think what to say, this has come upon me out of the blue. You see, how can I advise you? I don't know you at all. I suppose he's told you that I was a social worker...but really I can't imagine what he's told you."

"He's told me a lot. Everything that matters."

"But there's nothing left between us. It's been over for years."

"That's exactly what he said."

"Oh, so you think that an uninvolved person could help to sort out your problem?"

"You're hardly uninvolved."

"Look, have you tried the British Pregnancy Advisory Service? Their number must be in the book-"

"How can you be so callous? That would be very convenient for you, wouldn't it, if I got rid of it? You don't know how it feels, because you've never had any children."

There was a silence. She sensed that Isabel was deeply shocked by her remark. Perhaps she had gone too far; though it was no more than the truth. After a long time, the woman spoke.

"Suzanne, listen carefully. Much as I regret the situation in which you find yourself, I don't see how I can help you. What you do doesn't matter to me, one way or the other. And even what your father thinks, that can't matter now. I have troubles of my own." She hesitated; a long hesitation. "Perhaps in some way I'm missing the point?"

"I think you're missing it by a mile." Fright made Suzanne aggressive. "You do know who I am, don't you? You do know about our relationship?"

"We're not related," Isabel said. "What on earth do you mean?"

"Oh, very clever," Suzanne said. Her voice was shrill with exasperation. "He did tell me about you, how crazy you were, how you didn't give a d.a.m.n for anybody but yourself."

"He said that?"

"And more. He said he sometimes wished he'd never set eyes on you."

Another pause. "Yes, I see. Well, I don't really need to know this. Not at this juncture. Goodbye."

Click. She had rung off. The b.i.t.c.h, Suzanne thought; the monster. Jim had not told her then. He had not told her there was going to be a baby. Unless she did know, and was trying to ride it out. There was something very strange about the woman's att.i.tude altogether. Perhaps she was just one of those people who never face up to anything until they have to. Immediately she picked up the phone again and rang Jim at the bank. She asked to be put through to the a.s.sistant manager. He answered at once.

"Suzanne? I thought we agreed you weren't to call me at work?"

"Yes. We did."

"I told you: let me call you."

"But you never do, Jim."

"No. Well..."

"I rang up your house just now."

"That was silly."

"Why silly?"

"I gave you that number for...emergencies."

"Emergencies." Suzanne digested the word. "I spoke to Isabel," she said.

Jim swore softly. There was silence for a moment. The line crackled.

"Your wife...I'm not sure if she's very stupid or very clever. She didn't seem to know about the baby."

"She does now, I take it."

"Of course."

"Suzanne, get off the line. The switchboard will be listening in."

"All you care about are appearances."

"Appearances are all I've got," Jim said. "I'm ringing off now. I'll be in touch."

Suzanne put down the phone. She trailed upstairs.

Isabel lay on the bed, her head turned sideways on the pillow, watching the telephone as if it were alive. She felt sick; she didn't know if it were the phone call, or what she had drunk that morning. It's not often you get a call like that.

So that's what Colin thinks of me. Why did he talk about me at all then? What combination of circ.u.mstances made him confide in that hysterical teenager? And how did she get my number?

Her mind moved slowly, very slowly, in smaller and smaller circles. One day I ought to call Colin, and ask him how the past is catching up. Compared to her, he had nothing on his conscience. Errors personal, errors professional...memory with violence. Like a series of snapshots, or outline drawings, flip them through at speed and watch them move...Daddy slinking home from the park, Muriel Axon with her idiot head lolling above her strange blue smock. She suspected, and didn't let herself suspect; she had made connections, and tried to break them. She had punished herself; but of course that would never be enough.

She wasn't joking when she said she had troubles of her own. She smoothed her hand down over her body. It was all most unusual. There was nothing inside her but her liver, getting harder and harder. It was a horrible death, people said; but then it was a horrible life, wasn't it? She ought to be able to feel it, a tender ma.s.s expanding just below the margin of her ribs. Everybody knows what happens to people who harbour guilt; they get malignant diseases, and die. Not just little Suzanne who was pregnant. She had carried the weight around for ten years. Now it was becoming visible, that was the difference.

On Friday Suzanne went down to the Housing Aid Centre. She took some magazines to wile away her time, and a box of tissues, because she knew that she would keep crying every few minutes. She could no longer do anything about this; it was as if a tap had been turned on inside her head.

Yesterday she had told her mother that she saw no point in going back to university in the autumn. That had precipitated another row. She expected her father to see the sense of what she was saying because at least he knew something about education, and he could have confirmed how difficult it would be for her to go on studying. But her father seemed afraid of her mother nowadays. He didn't want to offend her. Mum had said that she needn't think she was going to mope about the house getting more and more pregnant, waiting for this man who was probably never coming. Claire had made her a cup of tea, and she had knocked it over in temper and fright. The atmosphere in the house was poisonous. As she ran upstairs again she had seen Lizzie Blank watching her; the look of speculation on the woman's face had been quickly replaced by an expression of sympathy and concern, and immediately she bent down, scrabbling under the hallstand with her dustpan and brush. The vacuum cleaner had packed up, the tumble dryer had broken, and the iron was overheating; perhaps there was something wrong with the wiring? Wiring? her father said: I haven't had the estimates for redecorating the kitchen yet, do you think I'm made of money? She began to cry again, at the look Lizzie Blank gave her, at this evidence of compa.s.sion from a total stranger.

At the Housing Aid Centre she sat for two hours in a waiting room surrounded by mothers with children. The women were pallid and hara.s.sed; each one of them was hung about by three or four plastic carrier bags. Although it was the height of summer, they wore great cardigans. She could not take her eyes off these cardigans; sagging and shapeless, hanging almost to their knees, or shrunken and felted and standing stiffly away from the narrow bodies inside them. Some of them wore jeans, others wore summer frocks with gaping plimsolls on their feet. Their hair hung in rat's tails, they had spots around their mouths, some of them sported tattoos. They made her feel an uneasy guilt, as if she had somehow been transported to the Third World. Some were heavily pregnant, some had babes in arms; they all had a couple of toddlers, running about the room, sucking from bottles or trainer cups, crumbling biscuits in their sticky hands. Every few minutes the one called William fell over, bashing his head on the corner of the table which stood in the centre of the room. Their mothers watched them with lackl.u.s.tre eyes, unable or unwilling to check them. They climbed over the women's legs, snivelling and bawling; one of them took Suzanne's Spare Rib and tore it apart like a circus strongman. Suzanne didn't protest. She felt it was no use to her anyway. "Give over with that, Tanya," the child's mother said, "give it back to the lady," but she didn't move from her position, slumped forward on the metal stacking chair, her legs splayed in front of her and her eyes on the floor. No one spoke to Suzanne. She felt conspicuous. She should have padded herself with a cushion or something. The Centre's workers scampered about with paper cups of coffee, light-footed and glowing in their seersucker flying suits and their rainbow-coloured trainers.

"So just let me get a note of this," her worker said at last. "Lavatories two, bath, shower. Kitchen, lounge, breakfast room, utility, bedrooms four, okay?"

"But I can't live there. That's my parents' house."

"Well, it does seem to be the most viable option, I'm afraid."

"I'll take anything you have to offer."

"But we couldn't offer anything, you see, on the basis of what you've told us. Not unless they throw you out. And it's no good colluding on that, we'd have to have proof, and unless you were actually out on the street with the baby, there wouldn't be anything we could do."

"I suppose I should have given Manchester as my address. I only had a room in a hall of residence, and I haven't even got that now, so you'd have had to find somewhere for me."

"In that case we'd have sent you back to Manchester. We'd give you your fare."

"It's impossible, isn't it?"

The girl shrugged minutely.

"I mean, those women out there, some have got two babies, and they all seem to be pregnant again. Why do they have so many children?"