Sheltering Rain, Page 34

  Joy stood stiffly, bracing herself.

  "I have no idea what you're talking about. I have not spoken to Sabine about you."

  Kate laughed, a hollow, humorless laugh.

  "Oh, you might not have said anything specific. But I know you, Mummy. I know how you are. How the things that you don't say can be as poisonous as anything you do. And believe me, something has happened. Because my own daughter now holds you up as a bloody template for true love. And everything I do is now bloody well deficient."

  "That is nothing to do with me." Joy's face was rigid. "And I really don't have time for this. Really."

  But Kate would not be stopped.

  "You know what? I'm sorry I couldn't be like you and Daddy, okay? I'm sorry I never did the whole white-wedding thing. I'm sorry I'm not still with my childhood sweetheart. But you know what? Times change, believe it or not, and not many bloody people my age are with their childhood sweethearts."

  Joy stood, gripping the chair even more tightly.

  "I can't live up to you, okay? I can't live up to you and Daddy and your bloody love story to end all love stories, okay? But it doesn't make me a bad person. It doesn't mean you can judge me for every little thing I do."

  "I have never judged you."

  "Oh, come on, Mother. You've found me wanting on every little thing I ever did. You judged me for Sabine, for Jim. You made it plain you didn't approve of Geoff, even though he was a bloody doctor."

  "I didn't judge you. I just wanted you to be happy."

  "Oh, rubbish! Rubbish! You couldn't even let me have the friends I wanted when I was a child! Look!" She reached over, and pulled the photograph of herself and Tung-Li from the pile. "Remember him? I bet you don't."

  Joy glanced at the picture, and looked away.

  "I remember very well who that is, thank you."

  "Yes. Tung-Li. My best friend. My best friend who I wasn't allowed to play with because you didn't think a girl of my class should be playing with her amah's son."

  Joy looked suddenly weary. She stepped backward, onto the chair.

  "That's not it, Katherine. You've got it quite wrong."

  "Oh, have I? I seem to remember you were pretty unequivocal about it at the time. In fact, I think you told me. Not appropriate, that was the phrase you used. Do you remember that? Because I still bloody remember, Mother. That was how much it hurt me. Not Appropriate."

  "That's not how it was." Joy's voice was quiet now.

  "He wasn't good enough for you. Just like nothing I've ever done has been good enough for you. How I live my life, who I fell in love with, how I brought up my daughter. No, not even who I chose as my friend. At bloody six years old! Not bloody appropriate!"

  "You've got it wrong."

  "How? How have I got it bloody wrong? I was six years old!"

  "I've told you, it's just not how it was."

  "So you tell me!"

  "All right! All right. I'll tell you." Joy took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. "The reason I couldn't let you play with Tung-Li . . ."

  She paused, took another breath. Outside the door, one of the dogs scratched and whined to be let in.

  "The reason I couldn't let you play with Tung-Li is because . . . I couldn't bear it. Because it was too hard."

  She opened her eyes, and looked straight at Kate. They were glistening, bright with tears. "Because he was your brother."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Joy Ballantyne was so ill with morning sickness, her mother told her friends afterward, that her husband had fired two cook-amahs in succession, convinced that they must be trying to poison her. The first Alice had taken somewhat personally, having gone to some lengths to secure the services of the number one amah herself--a task that had involved fighting off advances from no less than one of the Jardine family--but even she had to admit that Joy's frequent vomiting and inability to move from the sofa for weeks was not what one normally associated with a healthy pregnancy.

  Because from a little over six weeks, when Joy informed Edward of his impending fatherhood, she had become progressively more ill, her complexion blanching, and taking on a peculiar yellowish-gray hue, and her normally springy hair becoming dull and lifeless, despite her mother's endless attempts to set it. She found it difficult to move, complaining of motion sickness, equally wearing to talk, and almost impossible to socialize, as the vomiting outbursts would often come violently and without warning. Living in that block full of people didn't help, Alice remarked. "All those cook-amahs frying up garlic and goodness knows what in the day. Pig intestines hanging out to dry. Fried turnip paste. That revolting fruit that smells like something rotting." "Yes, thank you, Mother," Joy had choked, and leaned over to relieve herself in her washing-up bowl.

  Alice had cheered up considerably since discovering she was about to be a grandmother (because of her physical condition, it was not a secret Joy had been able to keep for long) and had, with an almost indecent satisfaction, leaped into the role of matriarch at number fourteen Sunny Garden Towers. She replaced the last number one amah with a girl from Guangdong, Wai-Yip, rather younger than most cook-amahs but with a reputation for English cuisine, and, as Alice pointed out, a younger woman was likely to have more energy for the children. "Because I'll tell you now, Joy, they don't just wreck your body, they absolutely exhaust you. So you'll need someone who can take them off your hands." She had also appointed the wash-amah, Mary, from Causeway Bay, and made sure she pointed out to Edward on almost every occasion the starched superiority of his shirts.

  Joy, meanwhile, had wept silent, bitter tears, resentful of this alien parasite inside her, deeply depressed by the unrelenting nausea and frustrated by her own incapacity. Most of all she cursed this unwanted usurper for coming between her relationship with Edward: for the fact that she could no longer accompany him to social functions, for her appearance, which she knew disappointed him, even if he didn't say it, and for the fact that already it had somehow divided them, turning her not into a partner, but into an impending mother, to be fussed over and protected by womenfolk and doctors, to be banned from riding or playing tennis or any of the other physical things they had enjoyed together. He was already seeing her differently; she knew it. It was apparent in the cautious way in which he approached her after work, to plant a gentlemanly kiss on her cheek, instead of gathering her boisterously to him, as he used to do. It was there in the way he eyed her, as she shuffled from room to room, trying to look like she was coping, as her mother raised her eyebrows and remarked that "she'd never seen anyone look so pasty." But the worst had come at ten weeks, when, evidently frustrated by the lack of physical closeness between them (she did usually accommodate him four or five times a week, after all), he had leaned over to her side of the bed and began gently touching her, his face looming over hers for a kiss.

  Joy, who had been half asleep, had woken with a sense of panic. She had not told him the worst; that the very smell of his skin now made her want to be ill. When he had done nothing but kiss her cheek, she had been able to hide it under a forced smile. Now, the rhythmic touch of his hand made her queasy, his mouth upon hers made her dizzy with nausea. Oh, God, please don't do this, she prayed silently, as he moved on top of her, clamping her eyes shut in an effort to block out the mounting sensations within. And then, when she knew she could hold off no longer, pushed him roughly away from her and ran to the bathroom, where she was lengthily and noisily sick.

  That had been the beginning of it; he had not wanted to hear her tearful explanations, had silently removed himself to the guest room, hurt emanating from him in palpable waves. He had not wanted to talk about it the following morning, even when the servants had been in the other room. But two nights later, when she had lain awake wondering why he was back so late from the dockyard, he had muttered two words: "Wan Chai." And Joy had been filled with fear.

  After that, Joy had never again asked her husband where he disappeared to, three or four nights a week. But despite being slack-jawed with exhau
stion, she would lay awake in her double bed, waiting for the sound of the front door opening, and for him to stumble, usually drunk, into the guest room, where he had taken up near-permanent residence (apart from the nights when he was really drunk, in which case he would forget that he no longer shared her bed, and she would be forced out instead, nauseated by the alcoholic fumes). In the mornings, they didn't talk; Joy at her illest, and unsure what to say, and Edward suffering under the effects of the previous night's consumption, and apparently in a permanent rush to get to work. There was no one she could talk to about it; she somehow didn't want Alice to have the satisfaction--and it would be a satisfaction--of seeing her and Edward reduced to the kind of polarized unhappiness so apparent in the couples around them, and, with Stella in England, there was no one she really thought of as her friend. Edward had been her friend; she had never contemplated needing anybody else.

  So she became thinner and thinner, at a time when, the naval doctor remarked, she should really be putting on weight, and sadder, so that she knew Edward found it easier to go out than to stay in and look at her reproachful face.

  And then, at about sixteen weeks, she had woken up one morning and found that it had almost disappeared; that she could contemplate the thought of food without groaning, that she quite fancied a walk outside, unencumbered by the fear of encountering foul, unexpected smells. Glancing in the mirror, she found that some color had returned to her cheeks, a little brightness to her eyes. "There you are," said her mother, with only the slightest edge of disappointment in her voice. "You've started to bloom. Now you can smarten up yourself a bit. Look a bit more cheerful for everybody."

  But there was only one person Joy wanted to look cheerful for. That evening, when Edward came home, she was not just awake, but dressed in his favorite dress, and lightly sprinkled in the scent he had bought her for Christmas. A little afraid, but more afraid of what might happen to them if she didn't, she had moved swiftly toward him as he had opened the door, and silently placed her lips on his, her arms tight around his waist.

  "Please don't go out tonight," she had whispered. "Stay with me." And he had looked down at her face, and his eyes had suddenly looked both terribly sad and terribly relieved, and he had held her tight to him, so that she thought briefly that the air might be crushed out of her, and they had stood there together, unspeaking, enfolded in each other, until the tension of the last weeks had finally eased away.

  "Well, you both look chirpier this morning," said Alice, when she arrived the next day to find them tucking into breakfast. And then her face closed off again, as she worked out why.

  Christopher Graham Ballantyne was born at the naval hospital some five and a half months later, following a short, straightforward labor that, Edward joked afterward, had had less to do with the baby's determination to emerge, and more to do with his mother's determination to be up riding again as soon as possible. He was a large, placid baby, adored by both parents, who nonetheless were very pleased to have Joy's body to themselves again, and did not let the arrival of their son impinge too drastically upon their social life or riding habits. Not that this bothered Alice; not just because it was considered a bit strange for parents to spend too much time with their children, but because it allowed her to devote herself to him, fussing over him, dressing him in pale, beautifully made outfits with silk-covered buttons, and parading him in his huge, imported Silver Cross pram, keen to show off his evidently superior appearance and personality traits to the other pram-pushers of the colony. Joy would watch Alice's adoration of her son with a mixture of maternal satisfaction and some bemusement; her mother seemed far more able to express unconditional love to this child than she ever had to her. She didn't remember enduring the endless cuddling, the ceaseless baby talk, and attention that Christopher now received as a matter of course. "Don't worry about it," said Edward, who was just glad to have the majority of his wife's attention. "They're both happy, aren't they?"

  And for the next two years they all were; Edward in his role supervising the engineering works at the dockyard, Alice in her role as unofficial childminder, and Joy, although a doting mother, once again at her husband's side, determined never to let that kind of distance creep between them again. Edward was, if anything, more loving, more attentive, perhaps grateful that Joy hadn't metamorphosed into the kind of anxious, flapping child-obsessed mother he had feared. He didn't mind not going off to sea, like some officers, who got restless when posted too long in one place. He liked to be with his family. With his wife. He never spoke of the Wan Chai period, as Joy secretly called it, and she never pressed him to explain what he had been doing there; she now knew enough of what that part of town was like to have far too many unwelcome suspicions as it was. Let sleeping dogs lie, that was the expression she used. They were all happy; happier than she had expected to be, given the events leading up to Christopher's birth.

  Which was why, when she woke one morning to the familiar, clawing sensation of nausea, her heart tightened with fear.

  "Well, your suspicions are correct, Mrs. Ballantyne," said the naval doctor, washing his hands in the little oval sink. "Just coming up to seven weeks, I would estimate. Your second, isn't it? Congratulations."

  He had seemed rather shocked when Joy burst into noisy, unchecked tears. She sat, her face pressed into her palms, unable to believe that the worst was happening.

  "I'm sorry," he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. "I had assumed it was planned. We did talk about . . . methods, after your son was born, after all."

  "He didn't really like them," said Joy, wiping at her face. "He said it spoiled things for him."

  She began to cry again. "We thought we were being careful."

  After several minutes had passed like this, the doctor had become a little less consoling, reseating himself behind his desk, and informing his receptionist pointedly by telephone that he would be ready for the next patient "very shortly."

  "I'm sorry," said Joy, rummaging for nonexistent handkerchiefs in her handbag. "I'll be fine in a minute. Really."

  "A baby is a blessing, you know, Mrs. Ballantyne," he had said, his eyes sharp under his half-moon spectacles. "There are plenty of wives who would be very grateful for a healthy addition to the family. And sickness is a reliable sign of a healthy baby, as you know."

  Joy, silenced by the subtle admonition in his words, rose to go. I know that, she thought silently. But we didn't want another baby. We weren't even sure we wanted the first one.

  "You might not be so sick this time," said Alice, who had been greatly pleased at the prospect of another grandchild. She appeared to equate her daughter's fertility with an increase in her own status. It had, at least, given her a role; something she had not had since Joy had grown. "Lots of women aren't."

  But Joy, already conscious of the hidden smells of the colony, already arrested by the sight of the carcass-filled dust cart, the pungent offerings of the street hawkers, the visible fumes of traffic, knew what was coming. And felt the helpless paralysis of a small animal caught in headlights, waiting for the worst to hit.

  This time, if anything, it was worse. Joy, swiftly placed on bed rest, was unable to eat anything except boiled rice, fed to her in spoonfuls every two hours, to try to stem the vomiting. She vomited if she was hungry; she vomited if she ate. She vomited if she moved, and vomited, often, if she did nothing but lay under the whirring fan, wishing, as she frequently did, that a large truck would come and roll over her and put her out of her misery. She could do little but murmur words of comfort to the toddling Christopher, when he clung to her supine body (how could she explain that the smell of his hair made her sick?) and soon felt so ill that she forgot to care about what Edward thought. She simply wanted to die. It couldn't feel any worse than this.

  This time, even Alice was worried; she frequently called out the doctor, who prescribed drugs that Joy refused to take, and became alarmed at the rapidity of her weight loss. "If she gets any more dehydrated, we'll have to put her on
a drip," he said. But his manner suggested that while it was all undoubtedly unpleasant, Joy was simply going to have to put up with it. It was all part of being a woman after all. "Why not put on some makeup," he said as he left, patting his sweating forehead with a folded handkerchief. "Brighten yourself up a bit."

  Edward, while initially sympathetic (he would sit and stroke her hair, and remind her unconvincingly that any time now she would be "up and about again") grew swiftly tired of his role as unofficial nursemaid, and, while evidently trying to be patient and understanding, could not hide his apparent suspicions that she was rather making a meal of things this time.

  "She's usually pretty hardy," Joy heard him say to one of his colleagues, as they sat out on the balcony, swatting at passing mosquitoes. "I can't understand why she keeps crying about it."

  He didn't try to make love to her at all this time; simply moved his stuff without fuss into the guest room. It had made her cry all the more.

  It didn't help when various other young wives and mothers stopped by to tell Joy of their own experiences. Some, inevitably, had sailed through it and remarked cheerfully that they "hadn't been the slightest bit ill," as if that should be of some comfort to her. Others, the worst kind, said they knew how she was feeling, when she knew they patently didn't, and suggested various remedies that, they assured her, were bound to have her up out of bed in no time; weak tea, crushed ginger, mashed banana--all of which Joy tried dutifully and threw up equally enthusiastically.

  Days gradually blurred into each other, dissolving into the wet season; still, humid days following interminable, sweat-drenched nights, and Joy found it harder to pretend to her son that Mummy was fine, or to her husband that she would soon be better (she had repeated this like a mantra, hoping it might prevent him from disappearing to Wan Chai). Physically weakened and sunk deep in depression, she ceased to note the days, counting them off as a coming return to normality, but lay in the half light, listening dully to her own breathing and trying not to throw up the water that Wai-Yip brought her, freshened every hour.