Wicked Pleasures (97 page)

‘Please,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘It’s quite bad. It’s very bad. Couldn’t you –’

‘Well look,’ said the midwife. ‘I’ll examine you again. See how you’re getting on. Then maybe see about an epidural then.’

‘Have you contacted Lydia?’

‘Yes, I told you.’ She spoke slightly wearily. ‘She’s on her way in. About half
an hour. Maybe a little longer. She’s been delivering another baby. Turn on your side, my dear. That’s right.’

Half an hour. Maybe longer. God, she couldn’t stand another half hour of this. She couldn’t stand another half minute. It was terrible. One pain on top of another, endlessly tearing at her, wrenching through her. Where was all the wonderful pain relief she had been promised, where was the epidural, where was Lydia, for God’s sake?

‘Relax, my dear, relax, I have to examine you.’

Right. Relax. Come on, concentrate. Breathing definitely didn’t work. Let’s think again, try and solve this riddle instead. Martin. Fathers. Yes, that was it, she’d thought he was like a father that day he came to see her in the hospital. She remembered now. Fussing and bossing. Just like a father. So sweet of him to come, though, so kind. Now then, what did that have to do with Angie –

‘Oh God,’ she yelled at the midwife, ‘stop it, stop it, it’s horrible, it hurts so much.’

‘Please, my dear, try and relax. Let me just –’

‘I can’t relax. I can’t. Don’t tell me to, it’s fucking impossible.’ She was crying now, and angry, hostile to the midwife, turning her head fretfully from side to side. She was beginning to shiver. ‘I’m cold.’

The midwife had finished examining her; she was smiling.

‘You’re doing so well. You really are. And so quick. You’re lucky.’

‘Lucky! Quick!’ She looked at the clock. Incredibly it was only half past three. This seemed to have been going on for ever.

‘You’re in transition, my dear. Any time now you’ll be able to push. Almost ready.’

‘But – the epidural – I want an epidural.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ said the midwife, patting her hand. ‘Much too late for an epidural. Your baby will be here in a very little while. I’m going to fix you up some gas and air, just to lift you over the contractions. We’re going to beat Mrs Paget to it.’ She fiddled about, beaming at Georgina as proudly as if it was her own baby being born. She handed Georgina the mask: ‘Now when the pain begins next time, put this over your face and breathe deeply. It will help you a lot.’

Georgina tried it; it was horrible. The room swam, receded, rushed back at her, but the pain stayed right there, splitting her in two … A young doctor had come in, joined the midwife.

‘Everything all right?’ He was smiling, a knowing irritating smile.

‘No it’s not all right, it’s bloody awful,’ said Georgina. She had a long respite from pain, relaxed on the bed. ‘Where’s Lydia? I wish she was here, I want her here.’

‘She’s on her way,’ said the doctor. ‘But I think your baby will be here first. Now, let me have a look.’

Oh God, not again, thought Georgina, surrendering herself to the double agony. She pushed the mask away.

‘Don’t. I hate it.’

She yelled out as he and the pain joined forces in her body, then hauled herself back into a semblance of control.

Think, Georgina, concentrate, don’t let it get the better of you.

‘Right, you’re fully dilated. On the next contraction, push. Push as hard as you can. OK?’ He smiled at her.

The midwife took her hand, mopped her forehead. ‘You’re doing so well,’ she said.

The contraction began. She was afraid of it at first, shrank from it, then felt it change, different from the others, strong, urgent, taking her over. She pushed, hard, frantically; the pain mounted, stronger and wilder.

‘I can’t,’ she said, ‘I can’t. It’s too bad.’

‘Yes you can. Now rest. Wait for the next one. Just wait.’

She waited. God, it was worse waiting than enduring the pain. Distract yourself, Georgina, distract yourself. Come on. Back to Martin, to Angie, work it out, what was it?

‘Push. Come on, push.’

She pushed. It was easier. She began to feel strong. She lay back in between the contractions, in a strange half world, alone, except for her baby fighting to be out of her, just the two of them, her baby and the pain; it was going to be all right, she was going to make it. Another pain, another push; another rest. Back to the thoughts. Martin. Angie. Angie’s voice. ‘I reckon he was in love with your mum.’

Martin. Daughters. Fathers. More pain; she could feel the baby’s head now in her vagina, pressing, urging at it. The young doctor was smiling at her, excited. She liked him suddenly, she smiled back. ‘I can see the head now,’ he said. ‘Next contraction he’ll be here.’

Rest. He’ll be here. He’d be here. A son. Maybe a daughter. Martin. In love with your mum. Something else. Christ, here it came again, what was it, what was it, push, Georgina, push, yes, that was it, that was it, she had it, she’d remembered, it was his name, Martin’s name, his second name, the Russian name, what was it? Yegor. Yegor, he was called. Push, Georgina, push. Here he comes. Yegor, it’s a Russian version of George. Martin, fathers, daughters, love, George, push just once more, push, George – yes, yes, that was it, George, George: Georgie.

And as she pushed her son out into the world, smiling, crying out in triumph, Georgina knew, realized finally and without any doubt at all, who her father really was.

Virginia, 1964

All she had wanted was to show him the baby. He had phoned, said he wanted to come that very day, the day she was born, but she had said, no, he couldn’t. It was too risky, it would look odd. He would have to wait. They would both have to wait.

It was four days before he finally came in. Four endless, happy, impatient days. Shy, agonizingly shy, hardly able to look at her, holding a big bunch of bright pink peonies.

‘I wish they were roses,’ he said. ‘But Catriona’s aren’t out yet. Anyway, she might have noticed if I’d picked them. How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Look. Isn’t she lovely? Georgina. Such a lovely, grand, pretty name.’

He smiled at her, awkwardly. ‘She’s absolutely beautiful,’ he said, gazing down at the small, sleeping baby, an expression of immense tenderness and awe on his face. ‘So beautiful. I’m so happy.’ And then: ‘How – how was it?’ he said, and blushed.

‘It was fine. I wouldn’t have believed how fine it could be. So quick, so easy. I actually enjoyed it. When she was born, I heard myself saying, “We did it, Georgie, we did it.” I was so proud, you see. No drugs, nothing.’

‘Oh, that’s good,’ he said slightly awkward, and then, ‘You’re very brave.’

‘Not at all. Honestly.’

‘I’m sorry she’s not a boy.’

‘I’m not. We can do it again, have another. Look, isn’t she heaven? She’s so long already! She’s going to be so tall.’

Georgina’s tallness, her thinness, her tendency to stoop as early as five, was something of a worry. It seemed to Virginia someone might, one day, notice it, remark on it. Well, Baby was very tall. Not thin, of course, but tall. And Fred III was thin. Although very upright, very erect. But that would do. Genetically that would do.

She was so happy, so terribly happy. Everything seemed to be going right suddenly. It was so good to have him there, within reach, within contact. She could see him, did see him, almost every day. God, she loved him. She found it hard to believe how much she loved him. He was her first thought every morning and her last thought every night. She would look at him sometimes, as he sat in the gun room with Alexander, when she went in to offer them coffee (she wondered if Alexander had ever noticed she only offered him
coffee when Martin was there, the rest of the time she left it to Mrs Tallow to remember to see to it) and feel quite faint, she loved him so much, all of him, his gaunt face – like, what had she told him he looked like, oh yes, a gentle hawk – his long neck, his untidy straight brown hair, his stooping back, his long long legs, permanently clad in their shabby brown cords, his hands, large, slender, beautiful hands, clever skilful hands that made her cry out with pleasure, over and over again. God, she loved him. And it was so happy, so wonderfully wonderfully happy, their love affair, so uncomplicated, so completely devoid of pain.

She thought every day of the first time things had happened: when he had told her he thought she was beautiful (so stunned she had been, so amazed, pregnant with Charlotte at the time, as amazed that he could think her so with her grotesquely swollen body as that he should say it at all); when he had told her he loved her; his smile when she had asked him to make love to her, in the boathouse down at the lake that dark, dark night, joyful, bashful, confident all at once, the expression of awe in his eyes when she told him she was pregnant, that she knew it was his; picking the memories over like sparkling, shiny jewels on a thread. They got her through the bad times, those memories, when she felt she couldn’t stand living with Alexander in the awful claustrophobia of her secret, for another day; when she actually quarrelled with Martin, quarrelled over Alexander and the ghastly farce of their marriage, when he wouldn’t, couldn’t understand how it worked, how she could stand it. The terrible time, when their other baby died, the poor, sick little Alexander, born too soon, born ill and fated to die, through her own fault, her own wilful wicked fault, her drinking, the awful, dreadful compulsive drinking that she could not, could not possibly, live without any more, not even when she had Martin, had Georgina, was going to have another baby. That had been the one time he had not been there for her; she had been in London of course, far from Hartest, from him; but she had longed for a phone call, a letter, a visit even. It was not such a very long journey, she had said to him; but he had said (when finally he did ring her, tentative, apologetic, sad) he had been too afraid, too fearful, not just of Alexander, but of her and of what perhaps he, as well as Alexander, was doing to her. But the memories, the happy memories, and her love for him, his love for her, got her through at all. Somehow.

He had been so hurt about Tommy, so horribly hurt. She wondered, very often, how she could have done it to him, how she could have done it at all; gone off and had an affair and slept with another man, a man she had hardly met, become pregnant by him – well of course, she hadn’t expected to become pregnant, it should have been impossible, the way her dates had been, she just hadn’t thought for a moment. She was not, of course, a very skilled user of birth control. But she had been so desperate for some fun, some laughter. However much she loved Martin, he wasn’t exactly fun. She had always hoped that he never knew how she kept going back to Tommy, an addict to a drug; she went to enormous lengths to deceive him, to cover up, more like a wife cuckolding her husband, she thought, amused, than a mistress cuckolding her lover. At any
event, she didn’t think he ever did know, he thought that Tommy was a once in a lifetime, a piece of madness that had overtaken her, still recovering as she was from the death of the baby.

All those years they remained close and loved each other; sometimes able to see more of one another, sometimes less. Catriona, dear, hearty, blind Catriona had never had the faintest idea; nor Alexander either. She felt, they both felt, terrible, deceiving him, when Martin was his employee, and was supposed to be, indeed was, his friend; but the alternative was telling him and there seemed little virtue in that. The third alternative, of renouncing one another, they did not even consider.

It was ironic, really, she thought, that Georgina should have been Alexander’s favourite child, as she was very much her own. She grew up quite unaware of the inordinate love of three parents: Virgina always made sure that Martin could be around on birthdays, at Christmas, that Georgina spent time with him. It gave her great pleasure, as Georgina grew older, that she liked Martin so much; and it amused her in a slightly anxious way to see them together, so extremely similar, both of them so tall, so thin, with their permanently anxious expressions, their rounded shoulders, their tendency to stoop. Her two gentle hawks: they smoothed the often rough edges of her life.

It had been her idea, the nickname; he had told her about his Russian ancestry, about his ridiculous middle name. ‘I like it,’ she said, ‘it’s lovely. I shall call you Yegor, I think.’

‘Please don’t,’ he said, ‘I hate it,’ and Georgie had grown from that, it was as Georgie she thought of him, it was Georgie she loved; and it irritated her, angered her almost to hear Georgina called Georgie, it intruded in some illogical way on the relationship, cheapened it, threatened it even. And at the same time it amused her that none of them ever knew why it made her so cross, why they had to avoid it.

All her married life she loved him; they grew, like a conventional couple, closer together as time went by, sharing simple pleasures in a way lovers can seldom do, picnics, walks, rides, even Christmas – and watching their child grow up. It always amused her to hear people say affairs were so unsettling, sources more of misery and distress than contentment. For her, her Georgie and her love affair with him were the great joys of her life; and she died calling out his name.

Charlotte, 1987

Gabe’s voice broke into Charlotte’s sleep.

She dreamed about him so often, still, that there was no real surprise in the fact; it was only when she pushed herself with great difficulty towards proper consciousness – she always had trouble waking up – that she realized that she was actually holding the phone, and he was actually speaking to her, his voice strangely muffled but unmistakable, deep, throaty, slightly impatient – oh God, it was a sexy voice – saying her name over and asking if she was there.

She sat up abruptly, realizing the voice was so muffled largely because there were several folds of sheet in between her ear and the receiver, pushing her hair back, feeling her heart pound so hard that she was sure if she hadn’t been in bed she would have fainted.

‘Gabe,’ she said, ‘what on earth is it?’ She looked at her clock: six a.m. ‘It must be – what, one in the morning there.’