Tree of Pearls

‘A few times.’

I let her breathe for a while.

‘Quite often actually.’

Fair enough.

‘Can I sit down?’

You can’t say no.

She sat on my old sofa, her knees together and her ankles splayed and taut with their high-heeled shoes.

‘To begin with, I was drunk – well, I’d go up there and drink. I miss him, you know. In a way. In a funny way.’ She didn’t start crying again. ‘And I’d sit, and drink. Then later I’d go up sober and sit and think. Trying to work things out, and talking to him and so on. And …’

I didn’t like this.

‘There’s a gravedigger up there, George. We got chatting – he’s nice. Well accustomed to widows, he says. Sympathetic. Likes a drink too. So we’d drink together. On Eddie’s doorstep. And then. Oh god.’

I was sure I didn’t like it.

‘Angeline, he says there’s nothing in Eddie’s grave.’

She looked at me, mascara wide as sunrays round her eyes. Like a picture by a child who has just noticed eyelashes.

‘In his cupboard,’ she said. ‘He says he was the one who sealed it up, and that the urn in there was empty, and he swears it. He said he wasn’t meant to know, but that the urn was too light and he checked in case he had the wrong one, but the undertaker said to him, yes, he’d been given that one sealed up, even though it was usually his job to get the ashes together and put them in, and he could tell by the weight that it was empty, so he’d checked it, and there were a few ashes but not, you know, human ashes, and he thought it was really odd but didn’t say anything. The gravedigger was drunk when he said it and later he tried to say he didn’t mean it but he did, I know he did because why else would he say it? Why would he say it if he didn’t mean it? And how could he mean it? So I shouted at him not to lie, and he said yes it was true, and then I didn’t believe him, but later I was sober and I could see he was telling the truth. He was so upset. He said he couldn’t bear the sight of me weeping day after day at an empty grave. He’s a nice man. Kind. And he said, he said: “You ask around. You ask some of those people. Someone’ll tell you.” But I daren’t because I don’t know what it means. I wanted to ask the undertaker but the gravedigger wouldn’t tell me his name; he didn’t want anyone getting into trouble. What can it mean, Angeline? Do you know?’

‘No,’ I said. Without a flicker. ‘I haven’t: a clue. It sounds like nonsense.’

Her shoulders went down a little. They must have been up. Tension. Not that she looked relaxed now. More – disappointed.

‘But why would he say—?’

‘I don’t know. People are strange. I don’t know.’ I was very blank with her. Very Teflon. This is nothing to do with me.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked suddenly. Her head went to one side for a moment and for that moment I could see what she must have looked like as a girl. Gymkhanas, Fergus had said. County military girl. Boarding school, and gone wild at an early age. I could see her, fifteen and boy-crazy, full of semi-educated English self-confidence. In a previous generation she would have been the backbone-of-the-empire’s wife, until she had a nervous breakdown on a verandah in Malaya. She had a very English profile. Pretty little nose. Fine fine lines on dry dry skin telling of late late nights and a lot of gin and tonics.

‘Fine,’ I said. In that English way.

‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ she demanded.

Teflon slid off me. I was totally confused. Why was she asking me that? What the hell do I say? I can lie about Eddie’s death but I can’t –

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘You look it.’

Don’t say, ‘How can you tell?’

I didn’t have to.

‘It shows,’ she said, and I looked to my belly and gave it away.

‘Not there,’ she said. ‘In your face.’ She was smiling at me, a warm, lovely smile.

I couldn’t look at my face. But my face looked at her, and she knew.

‘How marvellous,’ she said, with complete sincerity and kindness, and she was the first person to say so, the first person to know, and even though she was her, I kind of loved her for it. Then she jumped up and hugged me. Taken aback? Yes I was.

‘How many weeks are you?’ she asked.

The phrase confused me for a moment. What does it mean? Then I worked it out. ‘Nine,’ I said. ‘Or … no, nine.’

‘Oh wow,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t usually show at all so early. Maybe it’s twins. How long have you known? Oh …’ And I thought she was going to cry again.

I remembered her in the back of the ambulance that Harry and I called to take her away after Eddie’s funeral, in her big fur and stilettos, her over-sized black sunglasses, shouting and calling about abortions that he’d made her have. No children, wanted children, had children, had children taken from her.

What does she mean, twins?

I don’t know about pregnant. Pregnant is new to me.

Oh god, Sa’id.

*

Chrissie and I were still talking when Brigid came back with Lily. I didn’t want to. But I didn’t not want to. She told me what I didn’t know – that after the abortions (four) she had got pregnant again, which she considered something of a miracle, and gone away on a cruise, and not come back till she was eight months gone, and produced a daughter, for whom he hired full-time nannies, and who he had sent to boarding school from the age of four. She’s sixteen now, and Chrissie was going to see her at Christmas though she was spending the holidays with a schoolfriend because she (Chrissie) didn’t trust herself yet. Eddie hadn’t seen her for three years when he … died. She told me about scans and Braxton Hicks, about evening primrose and pethidine, about yoga and pools and the perineum, about hot curry to bring on labour. About clary sage and pre-eclampsia and BabyGap and Kamillosan and the Natural Childbirth Trust and the importance of letting the umbilical cord stop pulsing before it is cut. I didn’t mind. I told her that I had only known for twenty-four hours. I told her that I was amazed and terrified. She said that was normal. She made me laugh several times, and didn’t ask who the father was. She told me about foetal alcohol syndrome. I didn’t tell her her husband was still alive. She left when Lily came back, and ruffled her hair as she went.

Then Harry came to put Lily to bed. ‘I was thinking I’d like to have her for weekends sometimes,’ he said, ‘but actually I’d rather be with both of you.’

‘You’ll be wanting parental responsibility, anyway,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will. Better write to the court. When we get back the new birth certificate.’

New birth certificate.

I didn’t tell him.

That night I lay in bed thinking of the tiny Egyptian inside me, and I dreamt of a painting I’d seen in one of the tombs outside Cairo, where the occupant – Ptah Hotep – is portrayed with a tiny adult-proportioned daughter, just tall enough to reach his knee, holding on to his calf with one outstretched hand and striding along with him, between his knees, as he strides that Egyptian tomb-carving stride. If I remember rightly he was the Pharoah’s Official Keeper of Secrets, and hairdresser. Or maybe that was Ti. Anyway, plus ça change.

*

On Monday Preston Oliver rang during breakfast: well, while Lily was letting her porridge get cold and I was wondering why I didn’t feel like drinking coffee.

‘Can you make it down here for 9.45?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, on principle.

‘Try,’ he suggested.