Page 24 of A Midlife Marriage

‘I was thinking we should invite them to dinner next week.’

‘Why?’ Turning away, Caro pulled the plug from the sink. She hadn’t meant to sound so abrupt, but she didn’t want to invite Laura and Neil for dinner. So far, they had managed to contain any necessary socialising to coffee. Dinner was a different matter. Dinner could spill over for hours, way past F: (fertilise the soil regularly) …

‘Well.’ Tomasz wiped his hands on a tea-towel. ‘We have the solicitor next week. I thought it would be good to go through some stuff before ––’

‘Before what?’ This time the abruptness was intended. The trial run wasn’t over. They hadn’t decided anything, they had discussed many things, but there was a difference betweendiscussing and deciding, and going by the language he was using, Caro wasn’t sure Tomasz appreciated that. The solicitor’s appointment was merely to go through the legal implications of some of the changes they were thinking of makingifthey went ahead.If.

‘Before we make a decision,’ he said, and looked at her. ‘That’s what I was going to say.’ He folded the tea-towel back on the drainer and went to the door. ‘I’m going to check on the chickens.’

‘OK.’ She watched him walk out the door and along the garden path. This last week he’d spent so much time with the chickens, she’d started teasing him.Your babies,she’d said, but he was always there. Fixing a runway that didn’t need fixing or mending a fence where she couldn’t see a break. Almost as if he needed space. As if he too was having doubts. Thinking this she made a steeple of her hands and covered her face. The feeling that had started small as a stitch only a week into this trial, was growing. Laura and Neil, the photo Matt had sent her of the after-work celebration, that view of London, tomato, after courgette, after tomato …. She could hear the quiet whispers, growing louder every day.I’m not sure, I don’t know. I’m having second thoughts.

She turned to the table, and in a movement born of frustration, scooped up a handful of cabbages and dropped them in the compost bin. Nobody needed too much sauerkraut either, and this she could personally vouch for! Around the time she was trying to get pregnant, she had eaten it with every meal only to suffer constant wind. Those months when she was doing everything she could to make her body as healthy as possible, and then her body had betrayed her anyway. Looking back out to the garden, Caro breathed deeply, holding onto the air as if she were deep underwater.Our babies,Tomasz had answered, when she’d teased him about the chickens. But she didn’t think of thechickens as her babies, and the unborn soul who really had been her baby was a memory that no longer hurt. Motherhood had been such a fleeting experience, a few precious weeks for which she would always be grateful, but what she had said to Helen only a few months ago was true. She had accepted the fact that she would never be anyone’s mother and set about concentrating on the fact that she would be someone’s wife. It was eleven am on a sunny July morning so there was no reflection from the window to reveal the frown on her face, and the movement had been so subtle, she hadn’t felt it.

20

‘Helen.’ Christian raised his palm and as he did his rope bracelet slid across his wrist. ‘I’m sorry to stop you,’ he said, ‘but I have to tell you, you’re not doing a very good job of selling yourself.’

Helen blinked. ‘Selling myself?’

He smiled. ‘I’m hearing a lot of negatives. Not too many strengths.’

‘Oh.’ Stunned, her mouth stayed in a round, while her mind began a furious re-wind. What had she said that was so negative? He’d asked her to tell him a little about herself, so she had. Actually, he hadn’t said that at all, he’d said: ‘What’s your story, Helen? What’s brought you to this point in your professional life? I’d like to hear what you think your strengths and weaknesses are?’ And resisting the urge to slap out a few hard truths such as, Boredom? Divorce? Cake, she had remained on track. She’d explained that she wasn’t brilliant with the smart scheduling system recently introduced at the health centre and, until five minutes ago she’d never heard of POCT kits, although the idea of point-of-care testing, the ability to detect diabetes orheart disease, in the field, sounded wonderful.In the field,she’d had really said that.

‘I’m sorry, it’s not …’ Christian raised his hands. ‘You’re not quite what I was expecting.’

‘No?’ Her blood pooled at her feet. She felt humiliated and furious. Embarrassed and astonished.

‘How about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Are we what you were expecting?’

Helen looked at him. This young man with his rope bracelet and his over-the-top bonhomie and his vacuous,what’s your story?He wasn’t as young as Libby, but he wasn’t far from it. He was in fact … Her breath caught in her throat and swallowing was suddenly painful. Christian was about the same age Daniel, her first son, would have been, had he lived. ‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ she said tightly.

Christian looked down at his hands, then smiling, looked up again. ‘Can I ask why you’re here?’

Helen blinked. ‘I’m here because you invited me,’ she said. What a stupid question!

‘Yes, of course. What I’m trying to say is …’ And leaning back, he looped his hands behind his head in a movement of such casual indifference he might as well have been settling down to watch a movie. ‘What doyouwant, Helen?’

It was petrol on the fire, and she was a bear grievously poked, and he was all the complacent men who had ever asked her a version of this question and then not waited to hear her answer (which in any case had always been pre-empted to suit what she knew they wanted to hear). Well, not anymore! ‘I’m glad you asked,’ she said, ‘because I’m beginning to wonder myself. You invited me to a ‘casual chat’ in offices that look like my son’s bedroom, and all you’ve done so far is ask me what my story is! You want to hear what my strengths are?’ She stood up. ‘What ifI told you that I’m the only one in my family who can get the lid off a new jar of pickled onions? Would that be strong enough? Or if I said that every year on the twentieth of April, I cry for at least an hour because that’s the day I gave birth to a dead baby. Would that be just another negative?’

Now Christian stood up.

‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ Helen cried. ‘I don’t know why I’m here and I have no idea if this is an interview or if you’re just passing half an hour before it’s your turn in the gaming room.’ So that was that then. If she hadn’t blown this by treading on his foot, she most certainly had now.

‘I …’

‘Oh, never mind!’ she interrupted. And with hot tears forming, she turned to grab her handbag. There was no way she was going to let this young man see her cry; besides she had a dinner to cook. One thing at least she knew she could do.

‘We’re looking for an administrator to run the centre,’ Christian said helplessly.

‘I know that!’ Helen threw her hands up in the air. ‘I knew that before I left home this morning! Are you interviewing me for that role, or not?’

‘Yes …’ he stammered. ‘Yes, I am. Please.’ And he indicated that she should sit again.

‘OK.’ Helen sat, heavy as a sack of potatoes. ‘I’ll make it easy,’ she said, because now she felt sorry for him. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Was she that scary? ‘Front line medical admin is what I do and have done for years. I mail chemists and pharmacists and hospital secretaries. I type clinical letters and test reports, arrange all referrals and patient files. I scan, code and action clinical requests, translator requests. I source translators. I arrange the loaning out of medical equipment. If there’s a wheelchair to be found south of the Watford Gap, I can find it. I help implement community health drives andorganise transport when needed. I’m in charge of implementing emergency test runs and keeping policy updated. I’m even in charge of the office coffee budget and I organise the Christmas lucky dip. I have two living children and one grandson; I’ve cleaned bottoms and mopped-up sick. I’ve fed my family as healthily as I could for twenty years. I’ve stitched, painted and dug a home for them, held my dead baby in my arms and sat up all night nursing my daughter through a fever that barely stayed below forty.’ And … suddenly she stopped talking. ‘There’s really nothing more to tell,’ she said, ‘either I’m what you’re looking for or I’m not.’

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