The Longing Read online

  Her relationship with her mother was an extraordinary mixture of closeness and utter separateness, and it sometimes appeared to her that Mrs Palmer deliberately chose to hurt her in order to re-establish some kind of power over her. Juliet became adept at brushing aside the references to missing grandchildren, not only because she found them disturbing, but also because treating them with any seriousness made the awful possibility of a genuine problem more real.

  But the afternoon she caught Michael looking longingly out of the window at some small boys playing football outside the flats that backed on to their house, she knew something must be done. She walked up quietly to stand just behind him, and followed his gaze towards the laughing children.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, not needing an answer, but half hoping they could bring the unspoken problem out into the open.

  He jumped guiltily when he became aware of Juliet behind him. ‘I was just wondering if I needed an overcoat. It’s clouded over again.’

  ‘Oh Michael, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know.’

  If Michael was worried enough to protect her from his consciousness of there being something wrong, then Juliet knew it was time she herself turned and confronted it. Later that evening she studied again the magazine articles and chemist’s leaflets that she had hoarded in her bedside drawer.

  ‘I’ve bought an ovulation thermometer,’ she announced as she came in from work the next day.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’ll give me an idea when I’m ovulating, and we can make an extra effort, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I see exactly what you mean. It sounds delightful. I suggest you take your temperature this minute,’ said Michael, as he threw his jacket on to the sofa and began to undo his shirt buttons.

  ‘Michael, what are you doing?’ laughed Juliet. ‘Don’t be so silly. It isn’t instant like that, as I’m sure you know perfectly well. No, stop it – I want to read the instructions,’ she said as she wriggled out of his grasp and sat down, moving his coat on to the arm of the sofa. ‘Now look – it’s in a sort of huge scale – see? So I can—’

  ‘Come here, my dear,’ Michael interrupted, as he sat down beside her and slipped a hand inside her blouse, ‘and I shall personally undertake a particularly thorough examination. I’m sure we can sort out your internal problems in a jiffy.’

  ‘Darling, shut up. Listen. My temperature will go up immediately after ovulating and – hang on.’ She read on to herself for a moment or two, frowning a little. ‘Well, that’s a fat lot of good, isn’t it? We’ve got to make love like mad just before and during ovulation, and my temperature’s going to go up just afterwards. What good is the thermometer if it’s going to tell me when we’ve just missed it for God’s sake?’

  ‘I can see a perfectly simple answer. We make love more or less permanently until your temperature goes up, take a few days off to get up our strength, then start again. Don’t you think?’

  Juliet smiled but went on reading. ‘I’ve got to fill in the chart and put in little crosses when it goes up. Yeah, yeah, I see the point. I’ll get to know my cycle and all that. And I suppose at least I’ll know that I am ovulating.’ She turned to look at Michael. ‘I do love you, you know. Even if you haven’t got me up the spout yet. Come to think of it, who’s to say it’s me? Perhaps your sperm are a bit wimpish?’

  ‘Nonsense! They’re absolutely first class. Now come here and I’ll prove it to you.’

  But after a few months of temperature taking, crosses on graphs and carefully timed sessions in the creaking double bed, Juliet appeared no nearer to producing the longed-for heir. Michael knew she minded more than she was letting on, and noticed an irritation creeping into her attitude towards him. For his part, the necessity of performing to order was becoming increasingly difficult and depressing: it became hard to remember a time when they’d had sex for the sheer pleasure of it rather than to meet the demands of a schedule.

  ‘You’re on,’ Juliet said to him one night as she brushed her hair at the dressing table. After six months of attempts at timed conception, this succinct, if uninspiring, phrase had become part of their regular routine.

  ‘Again? Are you sure?’

  ‘Why, don’t you want to?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course I do. Do you?’

  ‘Well, we don’t have any choice, do we? I’m not going to waste another whole month.’

  Michael resisted snapping back at her, and only sighed quietly to himself as he pulled back the sheets and climbed into bed, trying to marshal his thoughts into suitably erotic directions, but feeling more like a sperm bank than a lover.

  The evening of the day she went to see her GP was the first time she cried. He had been so matter-of-fact, so sensible, and so horribly in agreement that ‘Something should have happened by now.’ She had half expected him to laugh it off, to jolly her out of it and tell her to go home and not be so silly (a healthily pragmatic approach he had taken to many of her minor ailments since she and Michael had become his patients on their move to Battersea), but he had listened quietly and seriously as she told him of her fears, and she had seen in his eyes that there was to be no quick answer.

  ‘I’d like you both to go and see a Professor Hewlett,’ he said as she came out from behind the curtains after the examination and moved to sit in front of his desk. He made notes as he went on. ‘There’s no immediately obvious problem, but I don’t see much point in making you wait before taking this further. Standard advice after a first infertility enquiry is to go and try again for a year or so, as you may know, but having known you both for a few years now I’m sure you’ve been making love the right way up, so to speak, and certainly from what you tell me you’ve been trying often enough and at the right times for it to be surprising that nothing’s happened yet. Your cycle’s a bit longer than average, but it seems regular enough, and the chart seems to show quite clearly that you’re ovulating regularly. Go and see Bob Hewlett and we’ll take it from there. There are plenty of good chaps in this field now, but he’s seen a lot of my patients lately and won’t take you round the houses. I’ll get Jennifer to make an appointment and give you a ring.’

  His mention of her periods took Juliet back to the time when they had disappeared, to memories of her anxious mother dragging her to the doctor at sixteen, painfully thin yet still refusing to eat normally.

  ‘You do know I was anorexic years ago?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course. You told me, and I have it here in the notes that Dr Chaplin sent on. That shouldn’t have any bearing on this at all. Your weight has been perfectly stable in the – um—’ he paused and looked down at the beige folder on his desk, flipping back several pages, ‘—ten years you’ve been coming to see me. Your menstruation was re-established a long time ago wasn’t it?’ Juliet nodded. ‘Don’t worry,’ he smiled up at her encouragingly, ‘there’s a long way to go yet before you need assume we have anything we can’t cope with.’

  She was calm all the way home, telling herself over and over again that the doctor had found nothing wrong; that she was to go and see a specialist and that there was every reason to feel positive. But when she had to face Michael, the dark creature that had so far only made itself known by occasional forays into her conscious mind seemed to grow and rise up and fly at her from the front. It was the way he looked up at her anxiously as she walked into the sitting room that made her give way.

  ‘How did you get on? What did he say?’

  ‘Oh Michael – there’s something wrong with me. I knew it – I knew it. There’s something horribly wrong.’

  She threw her coat on to the sofa and sat in the armchair, leaning forward on to her knees and rubbing at her temples in an effort not to cry. Lucy padded over to her and sat down beside the sofa and licked her hand, sensing unhappiness.

  ‘Why, what did he say? Juliet – tell me, please. What’s wrong with you? Can they do anything about it?’

  ‘He didn’t f
ind anything really wrong. It’s just that—’

  ‘Well then, that’s OK isn’t it? And who’s to say it’s you? It could be my sperm, you know. What did he say?’

  ‘Oh do stop asking me that! I just know something’s wrong, that’s all. I told you there was. I’m never going to have children, Michael, I can feel it. Oh God, what am I going to do?’

  She burst into heaving, sobbing tears, and the whole world seemed to be focused on her empty, useless womb.

  It was hard for the policeman to understand what Anna was saying through her hysterical tears. When his radio had first alerted him two streets away he had assumed that yet another car had been broken into, or a purse snatched: the theft of a baby was quite outside his experience and the painful distress of the babbling, wild-eyed girl in front of him was deeply unsettling.

  ‘Come and sit down for a moment, love,’ he said as he tried to shepherd her gently away from the doors of the supermarket. Then you can tell me calmly exactly what happened and we’ll sort things out. Don’t worry, love – we’ll get your little one back, he can’t be far.’

  But Anna couldn’t move. She was clinging desperately to the pram with one hand, and with the other she rubbed her cheek with repetitive movements that seemed to be trying to tear the skin from her thin, white face. The swollen eyes and blotchy, roughened complexion gave her the look of a wizened old lady and there was a bitterness set into the downward lines around her mouth that PC Anderson guessed had been etched there long before today’s drama. She had clearly had to face obstacles before, but now she looked as though she might be torn apart by the intense suffering suddenly thrust upon her from nowhere. The dense black make-up around her eyes was smudged and running, giving her the look of a frightened panda.

  ‘I’ve g-got to go and – and – and find him!’ she stuttered in a strong Glaswegian accent, easily discernible in spite of her gulping sobs. ‘My baby! My baby!’

  As she let go of the pram and made a sudden, darting move towards the door, PC Anderson grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her back to face him. Her eyes were wide open and terrified and sweat was breaking out on her face and neck; he could see that she was in danger of collapsing if he didn’t manage to get her to sit down quickly. He kept his hand on her shoulder and with the other behind her back, ushered her firmly through the checkout.

  A gaggle of assistants was hovering around the tills, their excited faces alternating between interest and sympathy, revelling in spite of themselves in the drama of the situation and in the excuse for a break in routine.

  ‘Stand back, ladies, please. Thank you. Now, love, where’s your manager? I need a quiet room to go and have a chat with this young lady. And I don’t want any of you to leave without telling me, all right? I may need to have a talk to you. One of you bring that pram with us, please.’ He turned as he became aware of a large, flustered woman advancing towards them, wiping back a flopping piece of startlingly red hair from her forehead.

  ‘Come with me, please, constable. I’m Mrs Paulton, the under-manageress. There’s a room at the back where you can be on your own. I’ll bring you both a cup of tea. Poor thing!’

  Both Anna, still juddering and hysterical, and PC Anderson followed the comforting shape of Mrs Paulton towards the back of the shop. As Anna passed packets of cornflakes, rice and washing powder she could feel a part of her brain vaguely wondering how they could still exist in this new universe in which she now found herself. Did people still eat? Did they still wear clothes, and get them dirty? It didn’t seem possible. If Harry wasn’t with her then surely the world as she knew it had stopped, turned upside down and shown its murky underbelly.

  As Mrs Paulton sat Anna gently down in the back room, the policeman waited outside in the corridor and radioed a quick message to his communications centre, aware that the simple words ‘alleged child abduction’ would ensure immediate action.

  ‘Right now, love, what’s your name?’ he asked as he came into the room and squatted down beside Anna.

  ‘Anna Watkins.’

  ‘And tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘I only left him for a second. I just needed to get a few things and he – oh God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to leave him, I love him so much. Oh Jesus, what am I going to do?’

  ‘Come on now, love, there’s no need to get so upset. The sooner you can tell me what happened the sooner we can get him back.’

  ‘They’ll take him away from me won’t they?’

  ‘No, no love, come on now, no one’s blaming you for anything. Just try and tell me everything you can. What was your little one wearing? What’s his name? Did you see anyone near the pram?’

  The baby was starting to cry. As Juliet continued to walk quickly along Streatham High Road he began to twist and squirm in her arms, turning his face round and up towards her, his mouth sucking and puckering, his eyes open and filling with angry, hungry tears.

  ‘All right, darling,’ she muttered into his pink coil of an ear, ‘it’s all right, Mummy’s here. We’ll soon get you home.’

  But even if it had been true, it wasn’t home Harry was after, but food.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Please, please stop crying. Mummy’s going to get us home very soon and then we’ll wait for Anthony to come. Won’t he be pleased to see you’re safely back again? Mummy lost you for a bit didn’t she, and Anthony was very angry. Everything’s going to be fine now, sweetheart, and we’ll all be happy again. Please try to stop crying, darling, please try. Sshhh now, quiet now, come on, stop it now, sweetheart. Stop the noise. Mummy’s here.’

  Juliet had reached her parked Volvo with an increasingly complaining baby and having placed him in a large shopping basket on the back seat was driving quickly out of Streatham in the opposite direction to the supermarket. His persistent wailing was disturbing her in a way that was more unsettling than anything she had felt for a long time and she couldn’t understand why the stomach-wrenching sensation it produced in her was so familiar. She had been through this before, but in an altered form, in a world the mirror image of this one, darker and more closed in. Where was she when she had felt this, many, many years ago? As she drove on, carefully following her planned route, she remembered: it wasn’t a child’s crying that this terrible sound was dragging up from her past – it was her own. She could hear again the sound of her wailing as she had heard it echoing round her head while they had held her arms and legs in the hospital to stop her running. The more she had wriggled and screamed, the tighter they had gripped her emaciated body, bringing the spoon with its unacceptable contents time and time again to her mouth, pressing it against her lips until she could taste it, or tipping its load into her open, sobbing jaws until she gagged, choked and swallowed in spite of herself.

  She turned around to look at the baby on the back seat, but could see only the brown wicker ordinariness of the basket, showing no sign of its extraordinary contents. It was comforting, and she shook her head a little to rid herself of the unwelcome memories that had broken through, unbidden, into the present. She would leave these thoughts till later, until she had reached safety for herself and the baby. Then she would have time to unpack her brain and slowly pick over the contents until she could face them properly and exorcise them; for the time being she would let them hover harmlessly in the pending section of her mind.

  Anna had lapsed into a defeated, miserable calm, and was doing her best to give the policeman the information he needed. She was a girl of innate intelligence and a natural toughness which had stood her in good stead through a life that had not been easy. Had she been dealt better cards originally, she would have played them well and avoided the traps set for her by others who appeared to hold all the aces. She had been born into an area of Glasgow that had rid itself of the slums of the fifties and sixties, only to find itself inhabited by an even greater threat. A new, insidious culture was breeding and spreading in the perfect medium of unemployment and poverty, filling the dish
that was this small pocket of crowded, inner city life with spores that were ready to break loose and find new areas to infect and ultimately destroy. The figures huddled in corners of Hyatt’s estate no longer discussed the buying and selling of watches or gold jewellery, but of cocaine, crack and heroin. The drug scene had become a way of life: the added threat of HIV had brought a new edge of despair and hopelessness to its victims and even those on the fringes of this miserable, pervasive trade – such as Anna and her family – were touched by its contaminating effects.

  She sometimes wondered if her early memories of her father, Ian, were imaginary. She was uncertain whether she had invented the times when the house felt happy; when he didn’t shout at her mother, when she and her younger brother, Peter, were given hugs from him at bedtime and treats at weekends. Years of watching perfect families in her favourite television series – when she had wanted to be like them so much that she had sat in front of the set, screwed her eyes tightly closed and prayed and prayed to be taken into the screen and into their lives – had confused her.

  But her memories were right. It was only after years of being unemployed since the closure of the tobacco factory where he had worked for over two decades that the morose, defeatist side to Ian Watkins’ nature was released, producing a bitterness that resulted in a lack of kindness and affection to his wife and two children that amounted to cruelty. The bitterness had infected his children: Anna made no real friends at school, and alienated her teachers with the harsh cynicism she expressed with sharp intelligence.