Where the West Wind Blows (10 page)

I can’t get them off fast enough and when I look up again he is already naked. Filling up my kitchen with his need.

He is no longer an intrusion.

Falling to his knees before the hearth, he reaches for my hand and pulls me down with him, the stone floor striking cold against my naked skin. I shiver as the chill air sweeps over me but his touch is warm, the ferocity of his feelings overwhelming, filling me up, leaving no room for anything.

Not even doubt.

Not even sorrow.

Not even guilt.

Fifteen

So, here I am, part of a couple again. We are an odd pairing but a couple nonetheless. We see each other every day; usually he comes to my cottage but sometimes I walk across the bay, climb the cliff path to
Y Pen
and enter his bachelor world.

The second time I visit his ‘hovel’ as he calls it, I notice belatedly that it is a converted railway carriage, and beneath the grime of neglect lurk fine Victorian wood panelling, brass handles and historic posters advertising train journeys to the west coast. In by-gone days the factory workers of England had flocked to Wales for a fortnight of sea air and Jezz’s home is a relic of that time; a remnant of Mr Beeching’s rape of the Welsh railroads. I resolve that, when I know him better, we will clean it up and polish it back to its former glory. The carriage nestles in a dip on the cliff top, the highest point for miles and when the wind blows strong the
hovel
seems to shift and lift like a great rocking cradle.

He begins to attend to many of the small jobs that I have long neglected at my cottage. He fixes a new tap so it no longer drips and seals the window in the attic so that I no longer have a puddle build up on the windowsill. He even sweeps the chimney and hoovers out the Rayburn, and when he lights a small fire afterwards I am amazed how much better the flue draws and how much brighter the flame. I look up at him. “That is so much better, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, just get that kettle on.” He wipes his hand across his forehead, leaving a stripe of soot and I laugh at him.

“Look at you, you’re filthy. Go wash your face, but first give me your jumper and I’ll stick it in the machine, look at it.”

“Did anyone ever tell ye how bossy you are?”

He strips off and stands bare-chested in my kitchen. While I am bending over the washing machine, he fills the kettle himself and is tossing tea-bags into the pot when someone knocks on the front door. “You expecting anyone?”

“No,” Puzzled, I quickly shove in a cup of powder and select the correct setting on the dial before hurrying into the hall to answer the door.

It is Huw, looking very sheepish and bearing what looks suspiciously like a bag of buns. He smiles slowly and lifts his offering.

“Good afternoon, Fiona, Gran had these to spare and I thought you might …” He breaks off the sentence as his eye focuses on something a little way behind me and I turn to see Jezz emerging from my kitchen, his chest broadcasting his virility. Huw lowers his bag of buns, his face reddening. “I see you are busy, Fiona, I’m sorry to intrude.”

Turning sharply on his heel he makes off along the front path. “Huw, wait …” I call after him but Jezz puts his hand on my shoulder and prevents me from following.

“Let him go,” he says, “it’s better that he knows where he stands now.” Jezz is right, to run after him might give him the wrong idea again. I close the door quietly and follow him back inside. The kitchen is snug and warm, shutting out the cold.

“Why do I feel so guilty?”

His big arms slide around me and I lay my head on his chest.

“Acht, you’re always guilty about something, woman.”

After Jezz and I become an item I do not think of Mrs Davis again and she has given up offering advice. When I go to collect my groceries she is detached and chilly, like the disappointed parent of a wayward child. The supply of buns has stopped and the snippets of gossip have dried up but still I smile and am as polite as I can be. It is the only way.

Jezz is
not
a killer.

He is the injured party.

He is big and rough and ill-disciplined but I wouldn’t change him. I love the way his big laugh fills up my cottage and it is good that, these days, I can detect no reservation in his joy. Slowly he is coming to terms, forgiving himself, learning to forget, just as I am slowly beginning to forgive James for abandoning me. For Jezz was right, so much of my misery was anger and once I let go of it and began to forgive, the healing began.

I consider myself fortunate and, if I were to die tomorrow, I’d die content.  I’ve been loved by two men; one a gentleman and the other, a bear and I am as close to being happy as I will ever be.

When the winter begins to bite deep we closet ourselves away beneath a heavyweight duvet in my chilly bedroom and, while the rain lashes against the windows and the draught seeps in beneath the shingle, it is warm in our bed.

There is no place I’d rather be.

Not in this life.

Not in the next.

Jezz’s lovemaking leaves me breathless, stirred up, wanting more, not because I am unsatisfied but because, like chocolate, the more you have of it, the more you want. He leaves me sore, sated and so tired that I sleep better than I ever have before. When I wake in the morning, if he is still with me, I burrow beneath the covers and rouse him, persuading him to love me again and, if he has already left, as he sometimes has, I find a cooling cup of tea on my bedside table and a single piece of sea glass; sometimes green, sometimes blue, and sometimes red.

Jewels from my man.

It cannot be forever
, my old self whispers,
nothing lasts forever
,
only death
but I shush myself up and refuse to listen. I tell myself I don’t care if it doesn’t last, I will live only for today. But, still the knowledge is there, at the back of my conscience, reminding me that one day I will be alone again.

Christmas comes and goes with the traditional present sharing and over-indulgence and January follows with the usual regrets and resolutions. Then February, with its fearsome roar soon giving way to brighter, brittle days and short afternoons that lengthen into long dark nights at the fireside. Spring is close enough now to offer some comfort and I begin to make plans. I don’t speak of them to Jezz for I am always conscious that he might not be here to see them through, but I make them nonetheless.

We begin to clear a patch of ground behind the cottage. He throws off his coat and I watch the play of his muscles beneath his shirt as he turns his spade, making easy work of the overgrown soil while I run backwards and forwards to the compost heap with wheelbarrows full of last year’s weeds. We hack back the overgrown shrubs and burn the clippings, the smoke spiralling above us before dissipating into the air.

On some level we realise it is not just the garden we are clearing but our minds, chucking out the dross of the past to make way for the future. A future in which we will grow cabbages and lettuce, tomato and onions, maybe even a patch of strawberries. It is an idyllic picture that I cannot resist.

In my attic room is a large canvas of the cottage with a pristine vegetable garden, hens scratching amid rows of produce and Jezz, relaxed and smiling, leaning one hand on his spade.

But maybe I am wrong to paint him so. Perhaps Jezz isn’t meant for smiling.

***

“What’s up with you?” he asks, handing me a cup one morning in late March. “You look like death.”

“I feel like it.” I take the cup from him but I don’t drink. When he goes downstairs to light the fire I slide the saucer onto the bedside table and put my hands on my stomach.

I’m going to be sick.

I am right. I am sicker than a dog. For what seems like hours I heave helplessly with my head down the pan, and then I emerge, white faced and worn out, to sprawl on the bed for the rest of the day. I can keep nothing down and, when I get on the scales, they tell me I have lost weight. I have noticed I’ve been losing weight for some time and when I tease the tangles from my hair, great shanks of it are left clinging to the bristles of my brush. I don’t want to lose my hair!

Jezz brings me tempting plates of food but I push them all away. I cannot help his hurt and indignation but I cannot think beyond the nausea and the disease that is eating away at my insides.

“You’ll see a doctor,” he says sternly, “right away.”

“My doctor’s in England.”

“We have them here too, you know. Transfer your records to the surgery in town. You should have done so anyway. You’ve been here almost two years.”

It hadn’t been worth signing up with a doctor, not when all I wanted was to die. Now though, now that I want to live I fear I wont be able to. Death is mocking me, punishing me for my fickleness, beckoning his long bony finger, dragging me away. Away from Jezz.

“No,” I say, “I will see the doctor but I will go home to do it. It’s about time I went back for a while. There are things that I need to sort out: things I’ve been putting off.”

“Home.” He picks up on that one word, repeats it accusingly but I don’t rise to his challenge. I don’t feel well enough but I stick to my guns. I am determined to do this my way. If the news is to be bad then I want to hear it from someone who knows me, not some stranger to whom I am only a depraved foreigner who is sleeping with a convict.

Jezz isn’t happy. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, no. I will go alone. I won’t be gone long, just a day or two.”

I don’t tell him so but the disease had begun to affect my bowels now, I’ve always been regular, same time every morning, but now I am bunged up and uncomfortable, my body feels bloated and tender. I am so poorly I don’t want to make love or be touched, just cradled, just rocked and comforted. And Jezz does that so well, my big, brave beast of a man. He is made for comforting. I am swamped in his arms, rocked like a baby but my dreams are of pillows held hard over my face, my breath staunched while Mrs Davis laughs as I battle for life.

He orders a taxi and comes with me to the station, carrying my bag, giving me instructions as if I were a child. I stand at the train window to bid him goodbye and see his big, solemn face, his hastily sketched frown. “Take care,” he says and his hand covers mine offering warmth and safety. At the last minute I want to change my mind and beg him to come with me. I know he won’t mind, in fact he will be glad and I really do need someone strong. But I leave the request unspoken and, as the train pulls away, Jezz raises a hand, blows me a kiss and I watch as his big frame grows smaller and smaller.

The bad dreams follow me to London and every night, Jezz is smothering me with my pillow or squeezing my throat, taking my life, absorbing my essence and I begin to wonder if perhaps the nightmares are prophetic. If I am right and I am sick of the same disease that afflicted Jezz’s wife, maybe they will yet become real.

If I stay.

But staying is impossible, if my fears are true.

How can I ask him to go through all that again?

London is thick with stench and pollution. At Victoria Station I hail a taxi and, third time lucky, I fall into the back seat. I give him the address and sit back, trying not to gag as I watch the outside world reel by like a fast-forwarded movie.

The street where I lived for so long seems like a film set and it takes all my courage to open the door of the house I once shared with James. Inside, alien smells assault me. It is tidy, clinical and not like home at all, the things neatly arranged on the sideboard belong to somebody else.

I snap on the kitchen light and find, to my huge relief, that the kitchen floor has been scrubbed clean and no sign remains of the tragedy that was played out here. I can scarce believe that those things were real. Was that devastated woman really me? It seems like a dream I had once and I have to check that the thin red bracelets on my arms are still there to bear testament to it all.

I pass into the sitting room where the familiar furniture is strange and I run my hand along the back of the white leather sofa and come to a stop before the fireplace where, what I used to think of as my best work, still hangs. I look at it now.

“Lord,” I murmur, “I don’t like that at all. It is so flat, so bright and empty. Chocolate boxy. I knew nothing about life then, how did I ever think I could paint and how on earth did I ever make a living from it?”

I move through the house, picking things up and putting them down again. Remembering my old life as if it is a play I’ve once seen and can’t quite remember the ending. And during the train journey I’d been worrying that it would all prove too painful and that the guilt would return and make me afraid to go back to Jezz.

I’ve moved on.

Happily.

It is such a tragedy that it is all to be cut short.

It is still light when I go to bed. As I turn back the flowered duvet I am sure I will never rest. The cleaning lady I engaged has been thorough and everything smells of Febreeze. I sit up on my pillows and pretend to read a book and the woman reflected in the mirror is thin and pale against the dark pillowcase. To my surprise, when I wake sometime later, the bedside light still burning and my book has fallen to the floor. I am sprawled diagonally across the mattress and, unexpectedly, I feel very refreshed.

I don’t want coffee but take a little orange juice, switch on the radio before stepping into the shower. Then I dress with care, fearful that I have forgotten  how. I am in town now, jeans and wellingtons will not do. I choose a simple a-line skirt and a light jumper, slip my feet into shiny black shoes that feel uncomfortably tight after so many months in trainers and Ugg boots.

I only take a light breakfast, a little cereal and milk but I throw it up afterwards and rinse my mouth with water that tastes brackish after the spring fed deliciousness I enjoy at home. By ten o’clock I feel a little better and, collecting my things, I close the door and walk through this strange town where I grew up and head for the surgery. 

The building sits, as it has for years at the far end of town, a squat brick built block with neat designated parking. A group of boys kick a tin can about as I cross the car park and jostle with a group of pensioners at the automatic door. At the reception a woman tells me my usual doctor is off sick and I will have to see a locum. I look at the ceiling and sigh with annoyance.
I might as well have stayed in Wales.

As usual, the appointment time overruns. I sit impatiently, tapping my foot and watch the time tick slowly by …and by. I flick through a magazine that offers advice for a healthy heart, suggesting fresh air, walks and exercise. I should live to be a hundred if that was all it took for a healthy heart.
If it wasn’t for this other thing gnawing at me.

But, finally, my name appears on the screen and I obey the summoning beep, pick up my bag and search for the appropriate door that holds the allocated doctor. He looks up, bright and breezy, as if I haven’t had to spend an hour and a half of my precious time awaiting his pleasure.

“Sorry for the wait, Mrs Japp.”

No one has called me ‘Mrs Japp’ for so long that, for a second, I am startled. I take the seat provided and clutch my bag on my knee. 

“What seems to be the trouble?” He is smiling at me, impersonal, clean and disturbingly young, with not a grey hair or a wrinkle in sight. I begin to reel off my symptoms; describing the sickness, the tiredness, the swollen body parts, the lack of appetite, the tears. I prepare myself for the worst.

“How old are you now? Let me see…” He consults his notes and then replies to his own question. “Forty-nine – nearly fifty. And when was your last period?”

Alarm bells begin to jingle somewhere in the back of my head as I grope for an answer. “Erm, I don’t know.
Ages
ago. I have never been regular and soon after James died, my periods stopped altogether and I assumed, since I am of that age, that all that kind of stuff is all over and done with … isn’t it?”

I barely notice that I have mentioned James’ death without so much as flinching. The doctor is holding out a small plastic bottle. “Could you pee in this for me, please? You’ll find the ladies toilet through the second door on the right.”

In a dream or a nightmare, I fumble at the loo door, drop my handbag, lower my knickers to squat inelegantly over the pan with the bottle between my legs. I can’t see what I am doing and hot pee runs over my fingers but I manage to trap some in the bottle.

I hope it will be enough.

“There we are; that was quick.” He relieves me of the still-warm sample bottle and retires to his table to tinker with test tubes and strips of coloured paper while I stare at his back and grip tightly to the handles of my bag.

This cannot be happening, it
cannot
.

I am almost fifty years old.

I am too old
.

I don’t even
like
babies.

“Hmm, definitely pregnant, look.” Frozen in horror I try to focus on the litmus paper that he waves beneath my nose.  “Take off your underwear and pop up on the table and we’ll see how far along you are.”

I feel as if I am in some ridiculous sitcom as I wriggle out of my pants and climb onto the table, the blue tissue paper cold and rough on my bottom. I spread my knees, look at the ceiling and try to think of anything but what is happening to me.

When he inserts two long surgical fingers, well oiled with K. Y. Jelly and presses down on my tummy, he doesn’t make eye contact. It is a strange impersonal invasion. Then he withdraws, clears his throat, snaps off his gloves and discards them in the flip top bin while I climb from the couch and fumble on the floor for my underwear.

“About four months, I’d say but, of course, the scan will confirm that. It could be a bit more.”

I open and close my mouth. “Four months? Scan?” I croak like an idiot.

I know nothing about pregnancy or child-care;
and as for
child
birth.

Oh my God.

A surge of panic erupts in a sob and the doctor looks up sharply.

“Ah,” he says, suddenly noticing my shock. “Not the news you hoped for, then?”

How very observant,
I think as I shake my head.

He offers me a tissue and I mop my streaming eyes, my hands shaking, my knees like jelly.

“I thought I had cancer,” I wail at him and he smiles gently.

“Then, surely this must be better news … isn’t it?”

Well, he is right, it
should
be better news. I’m not going to die, not yet anyway.  It
should
be good news but …
Christ all bloody mighty
, what on God’s Earth will Jezz say?

“Will you require a termination?”

“No!”

NO?
What am I saying?
I amend my response with a weak, “Well, maybe.”

He turns toward me, clasps his hand like a kindly uncle.

“Look, go home and think about it for a while, Mrs Japp. Give yourself time to get used to the idea. I’ll sort you out some leaflets. At your age there are other things that should be taken into consideration. There is a greater risk of Down’s Syndrome, that sort of thing. All this should be weighed up carefully before you reach any decision. When you’ve had a think, come back and see me. Bring your partner if you like … You do
have
a partner?”

I think of Jezz. I can see him in my mind’s eye fighting his way through the rough weather, outwardly strong, inwardly maimed, terminally injured. I see him variously; roaring with anger, his face creased up in laughter, then suffused with lust, looking up to grin at me from between my thighs.

He isn’t the ideal father material.

He is gonna kill me.

Somehow, I find myself outside the surgery, cars are queuing along the street, past the traffic lights, horns honking, the air thick with exhaust. People hurry past, pushing and shoving along the pavement, everyone in a tearing rush to be somewhere else. I hesitate for a few moments before I join the fray. A woman with a pushchair laden with shopping turns and hollers at her lagging toddler. “Come along, Jack, I haven’t got all day.”

The child saunters after her, not altering his pace. His shoelace is undone, his jeans sliding down, showing the cartoon characters on his dinky little underpants. “Oh, God,” I think, “I’m not cut out to be a mum.”

Except that I am old enough to be my child’s grandmother.

I can’t do this.

How can I go back? How can I tell Jezz? He will think I’ve done it on purpose. He will think I’ve set a honey trap. He will be
furious
.

Back at the house I take a hot shower and afterwards I throw off my towel to stand before the long mirror. It’s a while since I’ve looked at myself like this for its far too cold in my coastal cottage to be naked for long. In Wales, after a shower, I tend to wrap myself in my clothes as quickly as I can.

I turn sideways and examine my body closely, as if I’ve never seen it before. I have lost weight and, if anything, my breasts are smaller, the skin tight, the nipples pink. My ribs stick out below them like hoops.
It can’t be true.
I place my hands across the slight bulge of my belly. Four months? I am
four
months pregnant? I don’t look any different. I turn to look at my bum and wish I hadn’t. Then I lean close to the glass and peer at my face.
Maybe I do look a little different.

My skin is clearer, creamier, and my cheekbones seem broader somehow and I’ve a sprinkle of freckles on my nose that I’ve not noticed before. If this is what they mean when they say pregnant women glow, so far, I appear to have only managed a slight sort of glimmer.

Still naked, I sit on the bed and rummage through my bag for the leaflet the doctor gave me. It illustrates the different trimesters of pregnancy and I learn that, according to the badly drawn representation of a foetus, my child,
Jezz’s child
is already fully formed. He has arms, legs, internal organs and his heart is beating strongly.

All it need do now is grow and develop.

I wonder if it is a boy or a girl.

I look again at the naked fifty-year-old in the mirror.

There must be some mistake.

I should go home and face him, tell him the truth but I convince myself I’m not ready. I need time to get used to the news first and prepare myself mentally for the task ahead, but the longer I stay, the harder it is to go back.  Each day I wake up and make a different decision, putting it off, changing my mind, packing and unpacking my bag. Sometimes I think, I’ll just go and have a termination and be done with it. I could go on the pill and return to Jezz with him none the wiser about the whole affair. He need never know what happened.

I picture myself there, walking on the beach only now it is summer, the sun is bright and there are families picnicing on the sand, dogs barking, kites flying… mothers, fathers …children playing.

I’ve never wanted children. James used to say they got in the way, drained you of energy and prevented you from reaching your potential. He joked that babies were a cheat and only looked so cute because nobody would ever get broody over a spotty teenager. In the past I have always agreed with him. He was right, wasn’t he? Sleepless nights, juvenile tantrums, teenage angst …it’s the last thing I need.

It was the last thing James needed.

But I’m not James am I?

And neither is Jezz.

Then, as I am coming out of the bakers (I’ve conceived a unquenchable desire for éclairs) I see a baby in a pram; a baby all in pink, her face circled with swansdown, her mouth a tiny sucking bow, and something shifts inside me and I find I want to cry. I am crying, great splodges that drop heavily down my cheeks and onto my t-shirt.

That is what I’m carrying. A tiny child;
Jezz’s child
. A perfectly formed, defenceless miniature human being.