“It’ll pass, I’m sure,” Arthur said optimistically. “It usually does with Vivi. But at the moment she’s refusing to go to the funeral if Clive’s there.”
“What? Of course he’ll be there!” I sat down heavily and resolved to talk to her about it the next time we spoke, try to patch things up between her and our father. Why was it that I was the only person who didn’t fall out with my family? I thought, as I added two cups of sugar and one of flour to the mixture.
“Does she still want a baby?” I asked, worried their plans might have changed.
“Oh, yes, she definitely still wants a baby,” he said, without hesitation.
“Oh, good, because I think she’s got one.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Really?” His face broke into a smile. “I’m going to be a daddy,” he said as he sidestepped a chair to embrace me. We stayed like that for a long while, long enough for it to feel as if the embrace was welcome for other reasons than the baby. It felt more like comfort than joy.
Sunday
Chapter 17
Blossom falls like snow against the mottled sky, blizzarding my path until I reach the Tunnel Walk along our eastern boundary. Today is Sunday, the third day since Vivien came home, and I’m on my way to church. I’m not
Vivien walked down the drive, in the same way that she strode out boldly yesterday, right down the middle of it, in a tweed suit and black leather gloves, but I’m cutting down the path between the row of firs and the high fence, the Tunnel Walk down which I’d taken Arthur once. It’s strange, now I think of it, that I’d brought him this way when I hardly knew him. It’s a secret, childish route, but that didn’t cross my mind at the time. That must have been the last time I was here, but it hasn’t changed, and most probably not for a century. It’s ageless and, as I stand here, looking up into the woven branches above, I’m dizzied into any age I want. I can be a child again, hearing Vivi giggling farther down, urging me to hurry, or I can be a young woman collecting moss for the pupa cages, scouring the fence for the hairy gray chrysalis of a Vapourer, or searching for the holes of the Goat Moth caterpillar as it bores into the hard wood of the tree trunks. The path in the tunnel appears well worn, managed, even, compared to the rest of the wilderness our land has become, but it isn’t. It’s so starved of light that nothing grows here. It can’t get wild. Instead it is carpeted with layer upon layer of soft needles, year on year, so that the ground has become a mattress, thick and springy as I walk on it.
When I reach the brook at the other end, I see that the split weeping beech is no longer the bridge. Half of the tree stands alone and naked on this bank, and the other half, the half that had fallen over the water and given years of service to the villagers, has been removed. In its place is a flat man-made bridge, rows of neatly sawn wooden slats over which no balance is required. I remember Arthur poised precariously on the middle of the log, his arms outstretched, how it had made him think that growing up here would be fun.
Arthur visited me a lot back then, during my pregnancy, at least every other weekend and sometimes more to check that I was all right and because, I think, he loved his weekend escapes to the country. Vivi was thrilled about the baby and, although she couldn’t visit—she said she found it too painful to come to the house—she telephoned every other day.
My pregnancy filled a gap for all of us. After Maud’s death, it gave life a new meaning and, thankfully, seemed to lessen the storm raging inside Vivi. She did come to Maud’s funeral, even though I saw her glower at Clive at every opportunity. Clive didn’t notice. He didn’t notice anything or anyone and he didn’t hold back his tears. It was as if, without her, he had shrunk to a small part of himself, the oldest, least meaningful part, a case without its contents. I didn’t even get to speak to him. After the service he traipsed off to the bus stop to wait for the Belford bus to take him home to Paul Street, while Vivi raced off in her car back to London, neither going near each other or the house. If Maud had been around she’d have made Clive go to the little party Arthur helped me organize at Bulburrow Court. The entire village (and many from the surrounding villages too) filed in for what they instinctively realized was the last time, all talking somberly about the steep steps they would now be wary of in their own houses and being especially careful not to notice that Maud’s husband and younger daughter were not there.
The baby gave Vivi a different focus. When she phoned she quizzed me on how I was feeling and how my body was changing, not to empathize with me but because she said she wanted to try to live my pregnancy. She said she wanted to know every feeling and thought and craving and discomfort so she could understand exactly what it was like to be pregnant, and I spent hours trying to recall every detail for her as my tummy grew bigger. She started to wear the things that I wore and eat the things I said I’d eaten. She said she imagined there was a baby inside her, even though I tried to convince her that even I couldn’t imagine one inside me, that I didn’t think much about it at all, that I often forgot I was pregnant. But she shrugged that off as peculiar to me, rather than a natural state of pregnancy. Arthur told me that whenever he returned to London he was interrogated—How was I walking? When did I get indigestion? Had he felt it kick or wriggle? How swollen were my ankles?—and sometimes, he joked, he came back just to get away from the questions about his last visit.
Vivi and I saw each other twice during my pregnancy. Each time we arranged to meet at Branscombe, on the coast, where we spent a day on the cliffs walking to Beer and picnicking in little coves, and a night snuggled up in bed together at a B and B across from the pub. We were our only family now, the two of us and the bump between us. The only thing she talked about was the baby, as if our relationship was singly based on it. She told me what a wonderful aunt I would make and how, when the child was older, we’d take it on holiday to France together.
I tried to persuade Vivi to visit Clive at the Anchorage with me, but she wouldn’t. I saw him once a week during that first year, but he never got over Maud’s death. He remained distant and apathetic. All he wanted to talk about was the moth research, but he wasn’t even interested in that in his usual way. It’s difficult to explain how his interest had changed: he didn’t seem keen to pick at the details anymore—the experimental methods, the results or who wanted to publish them—only to know that I was carrying on, that I had got back up on my feet without him and had some projects going again.
At first he dictated to me exactly what research I should be doing and which grants to apply for and on my following visits he’d badger me about whether I’d done it or not. In the end it was easier to just say I had. I pretended to apply for the grants and then, naturally, I had to say I’d won some and was getting along with the research. I talked to him for hours about imaginary mothing expeditions, made-up methods of tagging specimens and plotting migratory patterns, the results of fabricated assays and numerous fictitious scientific papers. I made up stories of my success. It was the only thing he wanted to hear. It was as if he had to know that I’d made a success of it all by myself, that he wasn’t needed; that I could cope, I suppose. I have no idea why it preoccupied him so but I wasn’t going to deny him so I reeled off as much as I thought he wanted to hear, even though—at that time—I still hadn’t yet found the motivation to get back into it all. Sometimes Clive threw in a question that flummoxed me, but eventually he gave that up too. He wanted to live the rest of his life believing that he’d put me on the path to success, and I didn’t see why he shouldn’t.
It was several months since Maud had died—near the end of my pregnancy—when I first noticed that Clive was going batty. Our conversations must have sounded extraordinary to anyone who happened to overhear them. Nothing Clive said seemed to make much sense anymore, and I could tell him anything and he’d believe it. Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with acute dementia. Clive had deteriorated so quickly and suddenly after Maud’s
