My Real Children (27 page)

Three weeks later the family were in Florence. Pat went alone into the Duomo and quietly gave thanks to God for the world still being there. She went with the children to the Sunday morning service and prayed for the preservation of Florence.

On Monday morning Michael joined them. The children were off with their friends, and the three adults bought gelato in Perche No! and went to sit in the piazza to watch the sky darken behind the Palazzo Vecchio. Pat kept dissolving into tears. “We have to do something to stop this all being on a knife edge,” she said.

“What can we do?” Bee asked.

“Your books help people appreciate what they’re looking at when they see it,” Michael said.

“I was wondering whether I could use the semi-demi-fame I have from the books to start a movement to say that some places just shouldn’t be harmed. But I’m sure everyone would agree and then not take any notice.”

“Maybe we could start an organization,” Michael said. “Get the paper behind us.”

“Maybe. But it would need to be international to do any good.” Pat stared out across the square where Florentines and tourists were mingling on the ancient cobblestones in the twilight. “And why would China care about Florence? And the US left the United Nations, they don’t care about anything, but they have all those nukes.”

“The problem is that we say using nukes at all is barbarous and unthinkable and nobody should do it, and then we do it. If we said there were certain places that were sacrosanct then it would be tantamount to admitting that using them was acceptable,” Bee said.

Pat leaned down and put her hand on Bee’s shoulder. “But people are using them. The Americans and the Russians, and now the Indians and the Chinese. People will carry on using them to end arguments. And it’s all very well if the Russians will act with Europe, the way they did this time, but what if it’s us against them next time? In space and on Earth? All those bombs in orbit and on the moon?”

“There might not even be plants left,” Bee said. “But that doesn’t mean we can condone using them at all in any circumstances.”

“You sound like CND.”

“Maybe we should join CND,” Bee said. “We used to go on peace marches, not that it did any good.”

“We just live our lives and hope history doesn’t notice us,” Michael said. “But we could try to start up a list of places so precious they shouldn’t be harmed. An international list. The Great Wall of China. Angkor Wat. Machu Picchu. Florence.”

“The seven wonders of the world,” Bee said.

26

In Sickness and in Health Trish 1982–1988

Trish flew to Boston to see George get his Ph.D. “We’re going to the moon, Mum,” he said, when he met her at Logan airport.

“Because of the song?” she asked.

“Well, it probably helped, and we are going to be the first people to get married there, but really it’s because of our work.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said.

“When we come back we’ll have another wedding on Earth. We don’t want you to miss it, or Sophie’s parents either. But it does seem like a wonderful opportunity.”

“How long will you be on the moon?” she asked. “On the moon. Amazing to think of it.”

“A year or two, maybe more,” George said.

She stayed with George and Sophie for a few days. She watched George’s ceremony, and she visited MIT and Harvard and the Mary Baker Eddy Library with its stained glass globe big enough for a group to walk inside. Then she spent a blissful weekend in a hotel with David Lin. They all had dinner together in a Japanese restaurant where the food was so beautifully presented it was the most Trish could do to eat it.

Back at home, both of her daughters had news. Helen was moving in with Don, which of course meant that Tamsin was also going. This made a huge difference to Trish’s daily life, even though they only lived in Scotforth, between Lancaster and the university. She saw them often, but they were no longer part of her everyday life. Cathy surprised her even more. She came home for a weekend, alone.

“I wanted to tell you that I’m having a baby,” she said. They were in the kitchen, and by chance Cathy was sitting in the same chair Helen had sat in years before when she had asked Trish how she had known she was pregnant.

“Are you and Richard getting married then?” Trish asked, feeling déjà vu.

“No. In fact, we’ve broken up. He doesn’t want children, and we had a huge fight about it.” Cathy stared out of the window as she spoke. “I thought—well, never mind. But he accused me of trying to trap him, and so of course we couldn’t possibly keep on being friends after that. What actually happened was that we were on holiday in Hungary and his contraceptive shot had worn off and then we ran out of condoms and he said that hundreds of times nothing happens. But of course it did.”

“Is he going to support the baby?”

Cathy turned back to her in surprise. “I can support the baby perfectly well myself.”

“Are you going to move back home? There’s plenty of room, and we managed with Tamsin so—”

Cathy laughed, an uncomfortable laugh that sounded on the edge of tears. “Why would I move home? What would I do in Lancaster? I’m not Helen, Mum. I’m not a teenager. I’m almost twenty-three. I have a good job in London.”

“Twenty-three is still very young to be on your own with a baby. I’ll do anything you want me to to help, whatever you want.”

“I’ll get a nanny,” Cathy said.

Cathy’s baby, James Marcus Anston, was born in April 1983 in London. Trish was there for the birth, she had been there for the whole Easter holiday. He was born by caesarean, as the doctors felt it might be dangerous for Cathy to try to deliver him. Trish bit her tongue on her own stories of giving birth so many times. She admired Jamie, and admired too Cathy’s organization. She took only the statutory eight weeks fully paid maternity leave, and thereafter had two nannies, one for day and one for night.

Helen and Don opened a shop in the middle of Lancaster to sell computers to businesses and individuals. They sold Trish a word processor with a green screen, which she used for making notes for her classes. She found it much easier than the typewriter because she could go back to correct errors.

George and Sophie went to the moon, and were married there. It was international news, and the song got revived and played everywhere again. Doug’s career was in a down phase again, but the publicity sent his records soaring up the charts. He came home for a few months to detox. “I have to get off the smack, Mum,” he said. “Heroin is terrible stuff.”

“Anything I can do to help.”

“I’ll just stay here and work on writing new songs and go cold turkey.”

It wasn’t that easy, of course. He did manage to give up the heroin, but he kept on smoking and drinking. He filled the house with musicians and instruments and mess. Bethany, who had long since stopped even pretending to pay rent, but who took care of the house instead, protested at the mess, the noise, and the cigarette butts. He countered by mocking at Bethany’s flute music, and she grew furious with him. “It’s not your kind of music and you know nothing about it,” she said. Trish tried to mediate, but found it very difficult when Doug was so clearly in the wrong. Eventually he moved out in anger in the spring of 1984.

George and Sophie stayed on the moon. Trish heard about them on the news from time to time and had a three-minute phone call from George once a month. Whenever she looked up at the moon she had a thrill of wonder thinking that George was there. She missed him, and found the phone calls unsatisfying. But she would walk along the canal and look up at the silver disk and shake her head and marvel.

A few weeks after Doug moved out, Trish was summoned out of a council meeting with an urgent message. “Your husband is in the Infirmary and needs you.”

She finished the meeting and then went to the Infirmary. Mark had suffered a stroke. “He’s only fifty-four,” she said.

He was paralyzed down one side and could not speak. “People do sometimes make a good recovery from this kind of stroke,” the doctor said. “But there may be another clot, and while we’re doing what we can, it doesn’t look good.”

She called the children, pushing ten pences into the pay phone in the hospital corridor. Helen said she’d be there in half an hour. “Don’s setting up a big system in Torrisholme so he’s not here. I’ll drop Tamsin with Bethany if that’s all right.”

“You do that. She’s at home with Alestra tonight. And tell her where I am and that I may be late and she shouldn’t worry.”

Doug was in London, working on a new album. He refused to come. “Dad and I have always hated each other. There’s no point pretending anything different, Mum.”

“I know you’ve always had a difficult relationship, but that might be a reason to try to reconcile now before it’s too late.”

Doug blew a raspberry down the phone. “I’m sorry, Mum, but there’s no point, and I’m not buying into all that hypocrisy.”

She left a message for George to be relayed to the moonbase when possible. “I know you won’t be able to come, and your father can’t speak, but if you send a message I’ll make sure to read it to him,” she said, after she had explained the situation.

Cathy was out. Trish left a message with the nanny and said that she would call again later.

Helen arrived as she was on her way back to the ward where Mark was. She was hugely pregnant and her walk was a waddle. “I could hardly fit behind the wheel of the car,” she said. “Tell me it’s not the same ward where they had Gran that time? I couldn’t stand the irony.”

“It’s a men’s ward, but it’s very similar,” Trish admitted.

Mark glared at them from the bed when they went in. Helen went over and took his good hand. “Are you all right, Dad?”

Trish did not ask how he could possibly be considered to be all right. She saw the body in the bed as the shell of the man she had loved and hated and finally pitied. She pitied him even more now. She was trying to think what she was going to do if he did not die. If he recovered that was all well and good, but what if he continued to live in a state of paralysis, as so many people did after strokes? She did not want to have him at home, she shrank from the thought, but what else was there? She couldn’t cast the burden onto the children. He bellowed suddenly, making both of them jump and bringing in a nurse.

“What does he want?” Helen asked the nurse.

“No telling when they’re in this state,” the nurse said.

Trish went to try Cathy again and this time caught her. “I can come, but it’s going to be very complicated,” Cathy said. “Should I bring Jamie? Dad’s only seen him once.”

“Do whatever is easiest,” Trish said. “This might be a false alarm. He has had a stroke, but he could live for years.”

“Or he could die tonight,” Cathy said. “But it’s so late now. I’ll come first thing in the morning, I should be there by lunch time.”

Trish went back in. “Cathy’s coming tomorrow,” she said.

“Good,” Helen said.

Mark grimaced, or perhaps it was supposed to be a smile. A nurse came in and took his blood pressure and adjusted the drip in his arm. “I think I should go and collect Tamsin and get her home to bed,” Helen said. “It’s getting late.”

“Yes, go and come back tomorrow,” the nurse said. “He’ll probably sleep now.”

So Trish went home. Helen took Tamsin and went home, and she and Bethany sat in the kitchen and drank chamomile tea. “How is he really?” Bethany asked.

Trish explained concisely. “Sometimes people live for years and years in that condition. He could die at any minute, and I think it would be a blessing if he did. What am I going to do if he doesn’t?”

“It’s not your responsibility,” Bethany said. “You’re divorced. They shouldn’t even have called you really.”

“I feel so sorry for him seeing him so helpless like that,” Trish said. “And I did say ‘in sickness and in health’.”

“That doesn’t count after divorce,” Bethany said. “It gets cancelled out.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Trish sighed.

“Go to bed. And don’t feel responsible for him.”

Trish went to bed, and was roused by the telephone in the small hours. She thought it must mean that Mark had died, but it was Don. “Helen wanted me to tell you that she has gone into labor. She’s gone to the Infirmary in the ambulance. I’m going to bring Tamsin to your place and then join her there.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Trish said. She dressed and made tea and ate a handful of nuts and raisins. She wrote a quick note for Bethany: “Helen in labor. Tamsin will be asleep in her room. Please give her breakfast and take her to school! When Cathy comes if I am not back send her to the Infirmary to see Mark. Thanks, T.”

Don arrived with a sleepy Tamsin. “Hi Gran. I might as well have gone to bed here earlier!”

Trish hugged her. “Isn’t this exciting! You go up to bed. Bethany’s downstairs, and I’ve left her a note to wake you in the morning. This reminds me of that night nine years ago when you were born.”

She pulled her coat on and hurried out into the night with Don. As they walked down the hill she thought what a strange world it was—Mark possibly dying while Helen’s new baby was being born. She couldn’t say that to Don, she didn’t know him well enough.

“Have you thought about names?” she asked instead.

Helen’s labor went easily, as it had with Tamsin. Don stayed in the room the whole time, which was the first time Trish had ever heard of a man being present at a birth. The baby was another girl. “Donna Rose,” Helen said, looking down at the red-faced bundle.

“She’s perfect,” Don said, sounding awed.

Trish went to look in on Mark. He was asleep, snoring. He looked helpless and diminished in size under the hospital covers.

By the time Cathy arrived Trish was exhausted to the point where she could barely keep her eyes open. “We think your father’s going to pull through,” the doctor said to Cathy.

Trish went home and slept. She was woken by the telephone again—this time George, calling from the moon to find out how Mark was. “They think he’s going to survive. But he’s paralyzed and he can’t speak,” she said.

“What are you going to do?” George asked, his voice strange and full of echoes.