The Yorkshire Pudding Club (29 page)

Thank the Lord I ended work when I did, thought Elizabeth, who checked her watch and pictured herself getting off the train from Leeds at this time and heading back to her car for home. Unless, that is, a leaf had landed on the track at Carlisle and disrupted the whole country’s network.

Instead, she was sitting out in the garden, basking in the mid-August sun, and had been doing some small sketches with watercolour pencils that she would later frame for the baby’s room. There was a cat, a rabbit, and a duck, all of them bright and colourful with not a thick black line in sight. Elizabeth loved the sun and she thought the baby just might be enjoying it too. She felt that he was content, in his warm, watery cocoon; she was imagining that he was sleeping and dreaming of growing up to be a footballer, which at least would explain why his leg kept shooting out.

The back garden at Rhymer Street was small but perfectly formed. There was a little stone-flagged patio with a table and chairs, where she had spent many a pleasant sunny afternoon after school with her Auntie Elsie, soaking up the day’s last rays and tucking into
a glass of Ribena and a Golden Syrup sandwich. Roses flanked either side of a little ragged path, which cut through the flowerbeds to a second shaded area where Elizabeth had bought her auntie a swinging seat in the sales with her first wages. They had put it at the top of the garden where Sam was now buried and where her Auntie Elsie’s ashes had been scattered too, and where Cleef always sat, strangely enough. He was there now, motionless in sleep, except for his snakelike black tail periodically tapping as if in impatience. There was nothing to the back of the house but allotments and, give or take the distant sounds of the odd car in the neighbouring streets, it was usually peaceful and quiet.

She was just dropping off, savouring the warm feeling of the baby squiggling inside her, when she had the weirdest feeling that she was being watched, and it sent her catapulting back into full consciousness. She jerked up as she saw the large figure looming at the back gate.

‘What are you–some mad stalker?’ she shouted, shielding her eyes from the strong light.

‘I was just working out if you were asleep or just resting your eyes. I didn’t want to wake you,’ said John.

‘You did wake me,’ she said.

‘I knocked at the front.’

‘I was here, falling asleep, in the back.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, mock contritely. He didn’t tell her that he’d been watching her, savouring how serene she looked, sitting there with her face raised to the sun and her hand resting lightly on her tummy.

‘Come in if you’re coming then,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you a drink, there’s some beers in the frid…’ She tried to get up but fell back again, cursing. ‘Hang on, I’ll give it another go!’

‘I’ll go, Miss Weeble,’ he said, coming in and pushing her gently back down. ‘What’s that?’ and he indicated the jug on the table.

‘Lemonade,’ she said.

‘Fancy a shandy?’ he said.

‘Shandy drinker? You?’ she teased.

‘It’s very refreshing on a day like this. By heck, it’s hot; I bet you’re glad you’ve finished work.’

‘I was just lying here thinking the same,’ she said, stretching her legs out and putting them up on the chair. She looked like she had elephantitis, judging by her ankles. Did celebrities get all these unglamorous symptoms, she thought, or was it just normal people? She couldn’t imagine Demi Moore giving interviews about her piles, although so far so good, she had escaped that particular symptom–unlike Janey, who was suffering and imparting too many details for the others ever to enjoy a bunch of grapes again.

Boobs like watermelons, swollen fingers, battery acid heartburn…she didn’t think her body could ever go back to normal after all these changes. There was even a weird brown line that had appeared on her stomach, from her navel down, that made her wonder if she had started to split in half until Helen told her it was a normal
linea nigra
–a simple, bog standard ‘black line’. At least Miss Ramsay’s lessons had come in useful for translating the language of pregnancy
if not for conversing with any Roman soldiers who happened to be touring the area. She only hoped she could say a big fat goodbye to the chronic backache after the baby’s birth. She didn’t half envy Janey when she said George gave her those lovely back-rubs every night.

‘How you feeling then?’ John said, bringing two half-glasses of beer out, topping them up with lemonade and setting them on the little wrought-iron table.

‘Fat, lumpy and kicked to death. I think I’ve got Pele in here.’

‘Can I?’ he said, stretching his hand out tentatively.

‘Be my guest!’ said Elizabeth. Even a woman in the market had asked that question and she had found, oddly for her, that she had been proud to show him off. John put his hand down carefully on her stomach and the baby wriggled underneath it.

‘He’s saying hello,’ said Elizabeth, grinning.

‘Wow!’ he said, smiling with fascination; he could actually see her tummy changing shape, lifting and shifting. ‘Look at him go!’

‘Tell me about it!’

‘Is everything all right with you? You know, blood pressure and all that?’

‘I think so, but I went to see the consultant this morning and he wants me back in a fortnight ’cos the baby is the wrong way round.’

‘So what does that mean?’

‘I don’t know really, only that it would be better if he was the right way round. He said I hadn’t to worry, so I’m trying not to think about it.’ She shrugged and
swallowed and he could see that she was worried, despite the bravado act. She shifted his hand to a higher place on her stomach. ‘Look, see this hard bit? That’s his head.’

‘Crikey, that’s solid!’ he said, feeling it. ‘Can’t believe you’ve got a little baby in there. Really, it’s amazing.’

‘I know. I still can’t quite believe it myself yet.’

‘So when are you seeing Bubble and Trouble again then?’ he said, taking his hand away before it outstayed its welcome.

‘Well, I’m seeing Janey tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the hospital for a walk around.’

‘What time?’

‘Half past five.’

‘Want me to come?’

‘What do you want to walk round a hospital for?’

‘Company for you.’

She thought about it for a second. Where was the harm in it? Janey was taking George. Helen was not going; she had already been with her mother to the posh private hospital.

‘Okay then, if you’re that desperate for something to do with your spare time,’ she found herself saying.

‘What time shall I pick you up?’

‘I’ve to be there at five thirty.’

‘Yes, you said and I was listening, you know. Say five past then, that’ll give us plenty of time to get parked up.’

‘Okay,’ she said, smiling far more than she intended to.

At exactly five past five the next evening, the horn tooted outside Elizabeth’s house. She noticed that John was all dressed up when she got into the car and smelled of a delicate but manly aftershave. He scrubbed up quite well out of his builder’s garb. Very well, actually, and it was nice of him to make the effort. It made her feel quite special and a bit fluttery in the stomach area.

They met Janey and George in the main foyer. Janey gave her a knowing wink.

‘Bringing your
boyfriend
, I see?’ she said as the two blokes were talking together in front of them.

‘Get stuffed,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He’s just saving me from being a raspberry.’

‘Gooseberry,’ corrected Janey. ‘He’s a bit dressed up, isn’t he?’

‘Can’t say as I’d noticed,’ sniffed Elizabeth.

‘Anyway, come on. Mandy “Just Say No” is here already.’

They all wandered over to the rest who were congregated by the lifts. After a couple more arrivals, Mandy clapped her hands and welcomed them all. Marc with a c and Pam were still wearing their name badges, and Elizabeth wondered if they had one ready for the baby when it arrived–
Ffreddy
with two fs, probably. They all waddled off behind Mandy to the Labour Suite. Elizabeth had been imagining something a lot more archaic than the softly painted room with the serene pictures on the wall and beanbags and big cushions all over the floor.

‘Some women like to move about in labour and work with gravity,’ Mandy said, then demonstrated how they might use the beanbag, which was much the
same position Janey conceived in, if she remembered correctly.

‘…Although obviously you can’t get up and do that if you’ve had an
epidural
,’ Mandy continued, managing to imbue the word with all the qualities of the anti-Christ. She then took them just to the door of the Special Baby Unit and explained that if a baby was premature or needed some intensive treatment, this was where the nursing staff would bring him or her. There was a mother in there gazing at a baby, but luckily she looked quite smiley. Janey was glad they didn’t go in there; she had not let thoughts in of either herself or her baby being poorly, not even when Elizabeth went through that funny phase about dying in childbirth–and she did not want to start entertaining them now.

Following this, they had a look around the ward. There were some individual rooms with televisions in, as Helen was likely to have–that, and a butler–but most had four beds in them with baby stations at the side that looked like rectangular goldfish tanks.

‘They’re alarmed,’ said Mandy. ‘You’ll have a unique key to deactivate it when you want to lift up your baby. Very security conscious we are at Barnsley.’

They clustered around a mum with her ten-hour-old baby asleep in a tank at her side. He was wrapped up in a pistachio-coloured blanket and he looked like he was peeping out of a perfectly iced little cake. The new mum looked totally knackered but sublimely happy. Elizabeth put her hand on her stomach, trying to reconcile the fact that a baby as big as
that
was in
her tummy, and it freaked her out a little and she came over a little woozy. John saw her rock and his hands closed on her arms to hold her up.

‘You all right?’ he bent to her ear and whispered.

‘Yes, I’m fine, just a bit hot,’ she said, not wanting to draw attention to herself; but she wasn’t fine, not really. She felt totally shell-shocked.

Janey was even more excited now. The hospital visit just made her realize how close she was to the big day. She couldn’t wait to meet her little baby and, almost more than that, she couldn’t wait to see the baby in George’s arms. They had actually started talking sensibly about names now but she did not want it set it stone, just in case the baby did not suit the name when she saw it. Her parents, apparently, had been going to call
her
Bonnie–except she arrived into the world all red hair and snarls and looking anything but.

George was not enthusing so much on the subject of the baby at the moment. Yes, he was excited, but he did not want to see Janey in all that pain. He’d had a sneak look at
Four Births
when she had gone to bed and had had to switch it off and swig a big brandy.

Janey asked the others back to the house for a drink after the visit was over, but John said immediately that he couldn’t as he had somewhere to go, and apologized.

That’s why he was all dressed up, Elizabeth thought. It wasn’t for me, it was for afterwards. She knew immediately what the ‘afterwards’ was–it had to be a date. That would explain the nice aftershave and the smart shirt. She was an unexploded bomb of hormones, fears and insecurities and went quiet and had to concentrate
hard to stop tears flooding her eyeballs. The drive home seemed so very long.

‘You feeling okay?’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that there’s a lot to think about.’

‘Aye, well, you’ll be forty in just over a year. No wonder you’re getting worried,’ he teased gently, trying to make light of things.

‘You’ll be forty in just over a year yourself,’ she tried to joke back, but it didn’t work and came out flat.

‘Aye, but I’ll always be younger than you!’

Not if I die in childbirth.

She didn’t mean to think that. It just slipped into her head again, as strong as the day when Simon first put the thought there. John braked outside her front door and turned around to take a long hard look at her, because there was definitely something up with her.

‘Want me to come in with you for’–he checked his watch–‘five minutes?’

That slight action wasn’t lost on her.

‘No, I’m fine. I’m just done in,’ she clipped. ‘Thanks for coming with me but I don’t need your five minutes.’

‘I’ll see—’

However, she had shut the car door and was gone into the house before he could get the rest of his words out, and it was more than obvious to him that she would not let herself be followed in.

Once inside, she threw herself into her chair and rocked vigorously, listening to his car drive off, following the sound of it, wondering where he was going, who he was seeing.

What did you expect him to do? she thought. Hang around for ever? Put his life on hold for you?

Elizabeth didn’t know. She didn’t know anything any more, except that she was alone and confused and very, very scared.

It was probably the stupidest thing they had ever done, even stupider than Elizabeth copping off with the disgusting Wayne Sheffield, even stupider than Helen’s first Saturday job in a florist with her pollen intolerance, even stupider than Janey’s penchant for puffball skirts in the 1980s with legs like hers. Watching a video about four real births outranked all those stupid things, especially whilst eating a Deep Pan pizza that was looking more and more like a placenta by the minute.

The water birth had looked very calming at first, until the woman started screaming in agony, and not even the wondrously happy look on her face when the baby arrived about five years later could make up for the full horror of what they had just witnessed. The ‘normal’ birth, woman on table, legs splayed, pushing and groaning a lot, featured a ventouse and then a forceps delivery. The baby arrived with a pointy head like an alien from Planet Ugly and a bruised swollen face, screaming the narrator into second volume place.

‘I think I’d scream if I had a chuffing Dyson sucking me out as well,’ said Janey, who was most categorically
not looking forward to the birth experience now as much as she had been. She kept reminding herself to keep focusing on the beautiful little baby she would have at the end of all the pain, but the picture kept slipping away from her as if it was coated with mind grease. She tried to tell herself that she might be one of the lucky ones who only did two pushes and a shove anyway. It had been known, her midwife had said at the last antenatal; not everyone had long drawn-out labours, and she cited some welcome examples.

Helen was okay until the home birth, when the woman poohed on the carpet as the baby emerged. The midwife just scooped it up without a fuss, but the Frenchwoman’s image from that school day Biology lesson was re-burned in Helen’s mind bigger and brighter than ever, like a digitally remastered film.

They thought there was nothing left to see until the Caesarean-section delivery of a breech baby, which looked like an explosion in a mince factory. Helen screamed and hid her face behind a cushion, saying she could not watch any more, and Janey turned it off and put
Emmerdale
on instead.

‘I think we’ve seen enough now,’ she said. ‘Whose bloody idea was this?’

‘Yours,’ said Helen, still from behind the cushion. ‘Why didn’t we listen to Carol?’

Elizabeth couldn’t say anything; she continued to sit there looking stunned and rather grey. No one could go through
that
and live!

‘Look,’ said Janey, about to spread her ‘end justifies the means’ theory. ‘You have to keep your eye on
what we’ll have at the end of it all–a lovely little baby.’

‘But to get from this’–Helen pointed at her massive fundus–‘to that stage, we have to go through one of
those
.’ And she pointed at the video.

‘Well, it’s going to have to come out somehow!’ said Janey, sounding far braver than she felt.

‘I don’t think I can,’ said Elizabeth.

‘You’ll have to, love–we all will,’ said Janey, patting her bump. ‘Put it this way, it’s a bit late for us to back out now!’

Still traumatized, Elizabeth slotted the key in the door and walked into the cold silence. This is what it will be like coming home with my new baby, she thought. There would be no welcoming committee popping champagne corks, no mum pushing her down onto the sofa and getting her a nice cup of tea, and no one to have switched the fire on if the weather had turned.

Cleef stretched up and yowled a sleepy hello and she smiled gratefully. She sat down in the rocking chair and he jumped up and perched comically on the top of her bump.

‘At least you’ll be here for us, sweetie,’ she said, and gave him a good old scratch under his chin that had him purring like a Mercedes engine. She needed to ask John if he would feed him for her when she went into hospital. She wondered, too, if she dare ask him if he would pick her up and bring her home afterwards, so she wouldn’t have to take the baby’s car seat in with her. She did not want to ask him this favour,
but she was going to have to, because there was no one else–she couldn’t exactly ask Janey or Helen.

Her head fell forwards into her hands as if weighed down by her thoughts. There were so many little things still to orchestrate and gadgets to unpack and work out how they operated–the baby surveillance monitor that John had brought in his Santa visit, for instance, and the steriliser–and how the hell did you strap a car seat in anyway? It had taken her an hour to work out how to collapse the pram to get it into the car (even following the instruction leaflet) because she and the baby would need to go shopping together not long after they came out of hospital. The enormity of a simple bit of shopping in the future seemed as big as organizing a military operation to invade Australia. She had stocked the freezer up until it was groaning, but she would need fresh milk, and vegetables, and some fruit…Her brain was bursting with it all but at least she could make sure Cleef was covered.

John’s mobile clicked onto answerphone when she rang.
Probably out with his bird.

‘Please leave a message…’

‘Hello, John,’ she said, trying to master the unwanted waver in her voice, ‘it’s Elizabeth. I’m just trying to get organized and I wondered if you would do me a favour when I go into hospital. Will you call in and feed Cleef for me? Once a day will be fine if you leave him some biscuits out as well and change his water. I’ll give you a key when I see you next, if that’s okay. Thanks, bye.’

She knew he would help, but then a thought infested that surety. Suppose he was going away on holiday somewhere–with his new woman? He must be ready for one, with all that hard work he had been doing, and that’s what couples in love did in summer. What would she do then? The questions just got too big for her head and she didn’t fight back the tears when they came. She wondered if they would ever stop.

She met Janey and Helen the next day for herby tea and a laboured look around the shops to make sure there was nothing any of them had forgotten to buy. However, considering they had more or less bought up Mothercare, Babyworld and Sanitary Towels ’R Us between them, it was hardly likely.

‘Teddy Sanderson sent me some flowers yesterday,’ said Helen, picking the angelica diamond off her meringue.

Four giant owls’ eyes rounded at her as if they were on a diet and she was a mouse covered in clotted cream.

‘What did it say on the card?’

‘
Hope you’re feeling well, would you mind if I called you?
’ She was smiling like a happy lunatic with no cares in the world except what to smile at next.

‘You like him, you do,’ said Janey.

‘You’re right, I do,’ said Helen.

‘What–like as in fancy?’ asked Elizabeth.

Helen mused for a few seconds. ‘Yes, I think I do. He’s been on my mind more than I imagined he would.’

‘Could you snog him?’

‘Oh, most definitely,’ said Helen, with no hesitation whatsoever.

She had imagined that scenario already and found it a very pleasant one. It had gone quite a bit further than kissing in her fantasies but she was not going to admit it to anyone. Sometimes friends were too close to tell everything to–she had discovered that fact a long time ago. She had got too used to holding her secrets close.

‘Oooooooooo,’ said Janey.

‘Oh, come on. It can’t go anywhere, can it, really?’ said Helen, dismissing their excitement with a wave.

‘Why not?’ said Elizabeth. ‘You’re both single, you’re gorgeous, he’s rich, you’re not a gold-digger, you’re the perfect age for each other, he’s handsome…I think he’s exactly your type and you have to be his; he’d be mad not to fancy you. Need I go on?’

‘Oh, stop it,’ said Helen, whilst inwardly agreeing that, yes, he
was
her type, far more than Simon ever was. She could see that now with the wonderful gift of hindsight.

‘You heard from you-know-who?’ asked Janey, right on cue.

‘The barest communication via his solicitor,’ said Helen. ‘We have a buyer for the house. I’m getting the deposit back and eighty per cent of the equity.’

‘Wow, that’s good, isn’t it?’ said Elizabeth.

‘I haven’t asked him for maintenance and he hasn’t asked for access to the baby.’

‘Oh sod, that’s not so good.’

‘He never did want the baby. I know that now, so
I’m not shocked,’ said Helen with a loaded sigh, ‘but I feel so incredibly sad that my little girl will never share the sort of wonderful days with her father that I did with mine.’

Life with Simon seemed a million light years away, almost as if they had happened to someone else. She had not realized how cold and unhappy her marriage to him had been until she stepped out of his shadow and into the sunshine once again.

‘I still think you and Teddy might get together,’ said Elizabeth, hoping this was an appropriate thing to say in the circumstances. ‘Why do you say it can’t go anywhere?’

‘The reason why it can’t really go anywhere is because I’m heavily pregnant with someone else’s child, if you hadn’t noticed,’ said Helen, with a little laugh.

‘Not all blokes are pregnant-women-hating bastards,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I can see him and you with a little daughter walking in the park. He’d make a lovely step-daddy. He’s even called Teddy, for God’s sake. If that isn’t the most perfect name for a husband for you, I don’t know what is.’

Janey laughed and had a big bite of bun. Her torturous indigestion had gone and her bump had seemed to drop three feet overnight, which took the pressure off her digestive organs and transferred it to her pelvis. Win some, lose some, she had thought at that, with a smile of resignation.

‘What about you and John then?’ Helen threw back.

‘What about me and John?’

‘Well, you seem very friendly. I mean, he went to the hospital with you, didn’t he, so I hear?’

‘Oh aye, has Mouth Almighty there been gossiping?’

‘Yep!’ said Janey.

‘Well?’

‘He’s a friend,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He was only ever a friend.’

Janey and Helen threw each other a colluding glance, which Elizabeth caught.

‘What?’ she demanded.

‘Rubbish,’ said Janey.

‘Rubbish what?’

‘You were in love with each other. Still are, by my reckoning.’

‘You rubbish!’

‘
You
rubbish!’

‘Oh, come on, children,’ said Helen. ‘Elizabeth, grow up and listen.’

Elizabeth looked as if Helen had just slapped her.

‘We read your letter, so you see, we
know
,’ said Helen, adding a limp, ‘Sorry, but we did.’

‘What letter? Know what?’

‘The one you wrote after you sent John away at that wedding all those years ago.’

Elizabeth coloured. ‘You went snooping in my house?’

‘No,’ corrected Janey. ‘You left it out on the table–well, under a tea-towel. It wasn’t like it was in a drawer. We thought it was your drawings, so you see, we opened it for a look and then discovered it by accident.’

‘You didn’t chuffing read it by accident!’ said
Elizabeth, feeling as if she had just been emotionally stripped naked in front of her friends.

‘We tried to head him off at the pass,’ said Janey, ‘to tell him for you, but he’d upped and gone with that fluffy gonk.’

‘You what?’

‘We chased him to the airport,’ said Helen. ‘I think we missed him by half an hour.’

Elizabeth was open-mouthed with annoyance or shame or indignity or what, she wasn’t sure. ‘I can’t believe you read my letter!’ she said.

‘I can’t believe you felt that about John Silkstone and let him go,’ said Janey.

‘If you’ve got a second chance with John, you should take it,’ said Helen. ‘You would be a fool to let him go again.’

‘Listen, that was then and this is now,’ said Elizabeth, still red-faced. ‘Anyway, he’s seeing someone.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know who she is! I haven’t asked him.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I just know.’ Elizabeth stiffened up her spine bravely and tried to look unbothered. ‘Good luck to him anyway, he deserves someone.’

Janey and Helen both gave a sympathetic sigh.

‘You don’t really feel like that, do you?’

‘Yes, of course I do. We’re friends, nothing more. It’s too late for anything else.’

‘It isn’t, Elizabeth.’

‘It is, Helen. We’ve both moved on from those days. We’re happy being just good friends.’

‘Really?’ This from Janey.

‘Yes, really. Anyway, you said it yourself when we were arguing about that rocking chair. He isn’t going to look at me again, is he, after last time? Friends, that’s all either of us wants.’ Or can ever hope to be.

‘That’s a shame,’ said Janey. She had become increasingly sure that there was more to it than friendship: all the stuff he had done for Elizabeth and bought her, the way he had looked at her in the hospital. Then how quick he had been to react when she came over a bit wobbly and how genuinely concerned he had been for her. Although he had always been a very caring bloke.

Just a friend? thought Janey and Helen together. Maybe so. Awwww no…what a shame!

Seven years on, Elizabeth still had the letter wrapped in tissue in her drawer. She had written it on the night when she had come home from Janey’s cousin’s wedding, when she could not get his face out of her head after telling him to leave her alone for good.
Why couldn’t she just take his love? Why did she have to throw it back at him?
She had taken out her sketch-pad and pen and sat at the kitchen table.

I’m sorry for what I said, I didn’t mean it, but you know what I’m like, John. I didn’t think I could ever love anyone. I didn’t know what these feelings were until I knew I’d lost you tonight, then it was too late. I know you won’t have me back and I don’t deserve you. I don’t know why I did what I did. I’m screwed up, I’m stupid, so bloody stupid…

She never sent it, of course. He had a chance to be
happy with someone who adored him and you could tell by the way Lisa looked at him that she thought the absolute world of him. It wouldn’t have been fair to wreck that by telling him her heart was still ajar for him, because he would never have left her then. Lisa would be a lot less emotional maintenance for him than she ever would be.