True Love at 16?

True Love at 16?

I didn’t expect to find my true love when I was 16 and I definitely didn’t expect my friend’s brother to be my true love. In fact, when I found out James was moving down to Vancouver from Ontario, I figured we would just be friends. I had already met him, a few months before, and while I had felt some little spark of recognition at the time, I didn’t think anything of it.

I was 16 after all and dating was the last thing on my mind. In fact, I was adamantly against it.  Oh sure, I had dated a few boys over my teen years but I found dating had more headaches and pressures than I cared to have at that age so as my seventeenth birthday loomed a few months ahead, I was enjoying the last year and a half dateless.

When James arrived, he simply moved into my life without even a hint of upset.  He was there to walk me home when I left my friend’s house and he was there when I needed to talk to someone.  In the mornings, he would walk me to school and as he wandered away, I felt upset that I wouldn’t see him for the whole day.

It often felt like I had known him forever and I found myself looking forward to seeing him, something that was so unusual for me.  In addition, I felt completely at ease with him and I didn’t feel pressured or like he was simply waiting for me to give in and start dating.

I found that it was easy and for the first time in a very confusing childhood, I didn’t have to pretend or act happy when I wasn’t.  I didn’t have to hold back on my opinions or pretend to be something I wasn’t.  I was me, in all my opinionated, strange and dark way.  I could laugh without being scared to do so and more importantly, I could cry and actually explain the reason why I did.

It was a wonderful experience for me, and I cherished the friendship that we were building in such a short time.  But it was just a friendship, I had told myself.  I mean, who finds their true love at 16? 

As summer quickly shifted into fall, I realized that I had feelings building for James.  We didn’t talk about them, we talked about everything else but what was happening.  The days became crisp and the leaves began to change, a vivid color display amidst the evergreens.  And then one day, I looked up at him as he slipped his fingers between mine and I knew this was the man that I loved.

Panic seized me.  I was 16, how could I know what love was?  I was 16 but I knew without a doubt that I wasn’t the right person for him.  I panicked, and I fled the next day, telling my friend that I couldn’t see him anymore. I told her that I wasn’t right for him, wasn’t the best person for him and I was too confused, too immature, had too many problems to date anyone, let alone him.

She looked at me, wrapped her arms around me and said, “I think you need to tell James, not me.”

II didn’t know what to say, what to do.  Everything was too new and too overwhelming but eventually I agreed to let her talk to him for me.  Later that evening, I met with him and he simply shared the space.

We didn’t talk, he didn’t accuse me of anything or tell me I was being childish.  We sat there in silence and I simply enjoyed his closeness.  Finally, he looked at me in his quiet way and smiled, his brown eyes warm as he said, “None of it matters to me. Only you matter to me.”

I think it was his eyes that convinced me enough to stay and we simply enjoyed each others company until it got late and I had to go home.  When I closed the door after he left, I knew that I didn’t have to leave, didn’t have to panic.  I had found someone that understood who I was, no matter how strange or complicated I was.  I knew that I had found someone that I could love without being afraid to love.

The next day I saw James, and the day after that, and the week after that.  The days flew into weeks, the weeks into months and then finally  the months into years.  We didn’t rush into anything but we were married when I was 21 and now at the age of 33, I still look into his brown eyes and see the quiet man that he is.  I see my heart and I know that, despite all the odds, I found my true love at 16 and I look forward to spending the rest of my life with him.

Before Their Very Eyes

Before Their Very Eyes

By Clare Wigfall

‘Bertie Poyd,’ he corrected, holding out a hand still slick with cold cream. 

Frances stood dumb, uncomprehending. She wore a well-pressed but wash-faded linen frock, 

with a cardigan draped over her shoulders, and clutched a small chocolate box in one hand. The 

permanent wave to her hair looked tired, and her face had a fretful point to it. This was not the type of 

woman Bertie Poyd had instructed Front-of-House to send back to his dressing room. His preference 

was for fleshy blondes, although they were hard enough to come by, didn’t he know it, in these days of 

ration coupons and peroxide shortages in the chemist shops. 

When she failed to take his proffered hand he turned, indifferent, back to the mirror and peeled 

away an eyebrow.

‘I thought you were a foreigner,’ she said with bewilderment. 

He gave a snort. ‘Stepney born and bred, love. No more a foreigner than you, my darling.’ He 

peeled off the other brow. Without it his face looked somewhat formless in the bright dressing-table 

lights, his moustache over-black. ‘A name like Bertie Poyd ain’t going to pull in the punters, is it now?’

She gave a slight frown, as if she still didn’t understand, then appeared to check herself, and 

darted her glance about the room, as if she were looking for someone in the shadows. Her lips took on 

a confrontational pinch. ‘Where is he, then?’ 

Poyd took a slug from his gin glass. He studied his reflection in the mirror and wished this 

woman would go away. ‘Don’t know what you’re on about, sweetheart, but I think it’s time for you to 

be getting yourself home.’ 

‘No,’ she said, stiffening, ‘no, I won’t. Not until you tell me what you’ve done with him. Where 

is he?’ 

There was a tremble to her lip which Poyd noted as he watched her in the mirror. A crease of a 

smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘Where is who?’ he asked, with excruciating calmness.

‘Henry,’ said the woman, still struggling to restrain her emotion. ‘My husband Henry.’ She 

stepped a pace towards him, then faltered. ‘Please,’ she beseeched, ‘what have you done with him?’

The muscles in Poyd’s face fell as he realised, in that moment, who it was this woman was 

looking for.

‘Oh, bloody bugger,’ said Bertie Poyd.The day was an anniversary of sorts. That was why Henry had saved up for the tickets. He wanted 

something to take Frances’ mind off things. Wanted a chance to spoil her good and proper. He was 

thoughtful like that.  

Alberto Porelli, it said on the billposter, International Master of Mystery. The name conjured in 

Frances’ mind an image like those framed on the wall of the hairdresser’s salon - a tuxedoed gent with a 

brilliantine sweep of dark hair. ‘Ain’t never seen an illusionist before, have we, love?’ she said 

breathlessly as they took their seats down near the front. The auditorium resounded with excited 

chatter. Eyes bright like a starling’s, she glanced round the crowd, barely able to stay still in her seat.

‘Take a butcher’s at what I’ve got in me pocket, why don’t you?’ suggested Henry. 

She slid her hand in the front pocket of his Sunday jacket and drew out a small box of Fry’s 

Peppermint Creams. ‘Where on earth - ?’

‘Off a spiv down the market, didn’t I?’

As the house lights went down she kissed his cheek. Squeezed his hand tight as the drums 

began to roll. The crowd quietened. All eyes turned to the stage.

With a flourish, the red velvet curtains swagged back, and the audience craned in their seats to 

better their view, but the stage stood empty. They held their breath. And then suddenly, with a bang 

and a swell of smoke, the great man himself appeared, standing frozen above the footlights, his arms 

lifted and with his cape drawn out like the outspread wings of a blackened moth in a lepidopterist’s 

glass case. The lights burnt ghoulish shadows across his face. There were screams from the ladies, gasps 

from the men, and furious applause, riotous and unrestrained, erupted all round. Porelli, with a 

fearsome sneer, opened kohl-lined eyes wide and slowly rotated his gaze across the audience. Watching 

from the third row, Frances clutched Henry’s hand and feverishly sucked the chocolate coating from a 

peppermint cream.

The incident involving Henry occurred shortly before the interval. The audience had already witnessed 

Porelli levitate a dining table two metres above the stage - complete with white tablecloth, silver cutlery, 

crystal wine glasses, and burning candelabra. Through unbelieving eyes they’d watched him saw his 

assistant  – a spindle-legged redhead in an emerald green leotard  - into three sections with quite 

unnerving relish, before putting her back together again good as new. He had produced five live 

chickens from thin air, a bunch of carnations from his breast pocket, and lifted his top hat to let loose a 

cloud of butterflies which fluttered up to the theatre rafters. 

Now he called for a volunteer.

From beneath dense eyebrows, Sykorelli glowered at the forest of uplifted arms. He lifted a 

hand and swayed a finger over the audience, wavered a moment to heighten the tension, then swayed 

back again, until he came to a point in the exact direction of Henry Spencer. With a menacing curl of 

his lip, he finger-beckoned Henry to the stage.‘Gor’blimey,’ Henry whispered under his breath, ‘I’m in for it now. Look after the chocs, love.’ 

They were the last words Henry Spencer was to speak to his wife. Only a few minutes later, 

before a full auditorium of witnesses, Henry Spencer disappeared.

Of course Frances, sitting forward in her seat, applauded with the rest of them. Even so, she 

couldn’t deny a gulp in the pit of her stomach, because it was really so very queer to see your husband 

vanish just like that. One minute there he was up on the stage, grinning somewhat tensely, the 

footlights showing up for all to see exactly where she had darned his jacket the previous winter, and the 

next, in a cloud of smoke and an explosion of confetti, he was gone. 

Making Henry Spencer reappear should have been simple. Alberto Porelli made people 

disappear and reappear every evening. But on this particular night, in this November of 1948, when 

another flare of smoke and confetti dissipated, the square of stage whereupon Henry had stood only 

moments before remained empty. Porelli made a second attempt. A hush fell over the audience. Again 

a bang, a cloud of smoke, and again…nothing. On the third attempt, through the clenched teeth of her 

smile, his assistant hissed, ‘What the bleeding hell?’

The great illusionist raised wild eyebrows in her direction. He could detect a whispering in the 

audience, the nervous rustle of sweet papers. And so, with an inspired masterstroke, Alberto Porelli 

turned to his crowd with a sweep of his cape and announced with great aplomb, exactly as if he’d 

planned this all along, that Henry Spencer must have ‘hopped it down the pub!’ 

The audience exploded with laughter. Every one of them thought it a marvellous joke. Again 

Porelli bowed and the cheers rang out. ‘Gordon bloody Bennett,’ the great man muttered to himself as 

he lowered his top hat towards the audience. His assistant maintained her smile with admirable 

professionalism. In the wings, the stage manager, frantic, instructed the stagehands to drop the curtain, 

immediately cutting straight to the interval.

By the time the house lights came up, everybody had quite forgotten Henry and turned their 

mind to what flavour ices they might choose, or if they had enough spare change for a lemonade. 

Everybody, that is, except for Frances. She sat beside Henry’s up-flipped seat not quite sure what she 

ought to do. No doubt he’d be back in the second half, but still, it was all rather odd, and she felt a 

trifle disappointed to have been left to spend the interval alone.  She remained in her seat a few 

minutes, in case the plan was for his unobtrusive return, but with still no further sign of him, she 

tucked her cardigan under her chair and went to purchase a refreshment from the vending girl. Frances 

sipped at her straw, and leant against the wall, her eyes scanning the crowd. Henry’s absence left her 

rather at a loss, and to make matters worse, she found herself feeling a little queer. She rather thought it 

must be the bubbles in the lemonade, or maybe too many peppermint creams. Her body seemed 

strangely numb. 

When the bell rang to mark the end of the interval, Henry’s seat still waited empty. ‘But my dear woman,’ Bertie Poyd protested with an incredulous laugh, ‘you don’t for one moment 

think I really made him disappear. I couldn’t do a thing like that, my dear. Good God no. I’m not a 

miracle man, my love, I’m an illusionist. All I can do is make people  appear to disappear, that’s the 

honest to God truth.’

‘Well then where is he? You must know something. At least tell me how you do the trick.’ 

‘How I do it? Oh, no, no, no. I couldn’t rightly tell you that, could I now? A man in my 

profession can’t let on to his secrets, can he, or else everybody would be having a go, wouldn’t they 

just? All I know, you and your old man could be in this together, couldn’t you? A ploy to make me 

release my trade secrets. Ooh no, no, no, Bertie Poyd wasn’t born yesterday. He’s not falling for that 

one.’

Frances shook her head despairingly. ‘Oh please sir, just tell me what you’ve done with him.’ 

‘What have I done with him, the lady asks. What have I done indeed? Nowt, my darling, nowt. 

I’m most sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot be held responsible for your husband’s disappearance.’ 

His tone had shifted with these words. He sounded unamused now. Weary of this altercation. He 

swirled the clear liquid in his glass. ‘Have you considered, Ma’am, that perhaps your husband has 

slipped away of his own accord? 

‘What do you - ?’

‘Oh, I’m not saying anything me, not saying a thing. It’s merely conjecture. Merely idle 

conjecture. But sometimes a man can long to get away from things for a little while.’

‘Not my Henry,’ she said.  ‘Henry wouldn’t dream of worrying me like that.’

He shrugged, his nose crinkling. The woman had nice legs, he considered, it was a shame her 

face was so plain. Downing his gin, Poyd turned back to his cold cream.

She had trouble when fetching her coat. The cloakroom tag was in Henry’s jacket pocket. Their 

overcoats were the last two still hanging on the rail. They looked alone and sad. Like abandoned husks 

in the shape of a couple. The cloakroom lady looked at her with suspicion when she tried to explain 

what had happened. ‘You can tell your husband he can come fetch his for himself,’ she said coldly on 

eventually conceding to hand Frances’ coat over. 

Frances was trembling as she stepped outside, trembling from more than the night air alone. 

She boarded a bus and took a seat on the lower deck. She still had the remaining peppermint creams, 

but even just looking at them made the queasiness surge again so she left them on the bus seat for 

someone else to find. Only as she was walking down her street in the dull lamplight did she recall 

Henry’s parting words. That was when she finally started to cry. She thought of the little box of creams 

he’d procured so thoughtfully, now winging its way alone into the night and far away from her forever.

Their little terraced house was in darkness. Frances turned her key in the lock and the silence 

she met made her cry even harder.  It was four years to the day since she and Henry had first met. A Friday night, and she was down at the 

local with a couple of her girlfriends. She was seventeen years old, wearing a frock bedecked with 

poppies. She was not of an age to drink, but her friend Belinda was pretty enough that the barman was 

not inclined to question them. Besides, Frances only ever ordered a half pint of shandy. She was there 

for the lark of it. She liked the camaraderie, the singing. She liked to see the demobbed soldiers up at 

the bar, although she was far too shy to strike up a conversation. If her dad knew where she was, he’d 

have had her over the washtub to hide her behind. Her mum knew better what was going on, but 

turned a blind eye, ‘A girl your age needs a bit of fun in her life, sure it’s hard enough to come by in 

these times,’ she’d said one night, as Frances was wrapping up to head out. ‘You will  be sensible 

though, won’t you, love? Don’t go forgetting your gas mask and don’t go letting any chaps touch you 

down there.’ Blushing red as rosehip syrup, Frances escaped out the door and clattered down the front 

path. She’d heard other girls talk about what men liked to do to a girl.  

In the pub that evening, a soldier started chatting as she was up at the bar. Would she like a 

drink? A glass of sweet sherry, perhaps? He was still in his uniform and his cheeks were clean-shaven. 

His lips were very pink  and soft-looking. She thought about what her mother had told her and was 

about to reply when someone burst through the swinging door of the pub shouting, ‘Regina Road has 

been hit!’

Regina Road. 

Regina Road, with their little house at the end of the terraced row, and only a stone-flagged 

back patio, too small to build an Anderson shelter. Her mum and dad at home in the front room, 

listening to the wireless before the fire. Mum busy at her knitting. Dad with the cat on his lap. 

She knew before she arrived that it would all be gone. She had run out the door of the pub in a 

blind panic, bare-armed into the cold November air, forgetting her cardigan, her overcoat, her purse, 

her gas mask. She ran wildly through the streets, through the wail of the sirens, smelling building dust 

and cinder in the air as she drew closer. 

Where her street had once stood, she confronted now a mess of rubble and fire and 

destruction. The inferno was so hot it singed her eyebrows. The air was thick with smoke and black 

fluttering ashy smuts. It made her cough. She could taste the loss in her throat. 

She’d lived with this war long enough to know that this was how it worked. This was happening 

all the time. People losing everything. But then it happened to you and your world fell  away  beneath 

your feet. 

A warden saw the panicking smoke-smudged girl in the poppy-covered dress. She was 

screaming and cawing and clambering over the rubble in frenzied horror. He grabbed her and held her 

tightly. He wrapped his arms around her and held this weeping, shuddering, trembling seventeen-year-old girl until eventually she calmed enough for him to wrap a blanket around her shoulders and take 

her to the neighbourhood base station for a cup of sweet tea. 

That warden was Henry.

When, shortly before the evening interval, Alberto Porelli again requested a volunteer from his 

audience, he had barely a chance to raise his finger before a slight woman near the front stepped from 

the seat and made her way purposefully toward the stage. 

‘Me,’ she said, staring him direct in the eyes. ‘Tonight you will pick me.’ 

She took the hand of his hesitant assistant and climbed up onto the stage. 

‘‘Evening, Signor Porelli,’ said the young woman, without even a hint of a smile.

‘Buonasera, Madame,’ he responded awkwardly, before giving a flourish of his cape to 

demonstrate to the audience that he had everything under control. 

She took her position on the stage and nodded to Porelli.

The audience was expectant. 

Porelli’s assistant looked nervous. Her emerald-green sequins sparkled in the footlights. 

‘Uno,’ said Porelli, still with a touch of hesitation.

The subject of his trick stared grimly ahead.

‘Due,’ called Porelli, with more authority this time.

‘Tre!’ he concluded dramatically and held his breath. 

There was a great puff of smoke, a flash of confetti. The audience burst into astonished 

applause.  

Before their very eyes, Frances Spencer had disappeared.

At the end of the night, the cloakroom assistant was surprised to find a coat still left hanging on the 

rail. A black woollen lady’s overcoat with a pair of fawn leather gloves folded into the pockets. It was 

the second time this week that a coat had been left unclaimed. She checked it over as she placed it in 

the lost property box at the end of the evening. It was well-worn, and the lining has been repaired more 

than once by the look of things, but there was still a good deal of life left in it. The cloakroom assistant 

left the overcoat in the box for a fortnight, but when no one came to claim it, she eventually fetched it 

out again, smoothed it down, and took it home for her niece.

Clare Wigfall, Berlin, November 2011

A Tray of Ice Cubes...by Gerard Woodward

  A Tray of Ice Cubes

 

            Daphne and Colin were spending Friday evening as they spent most Friday evenings – in front of the telly with a microwaved dinner and a bottle of sweet German wine, watching their favourite programme; a camcorder compilation of matrimonial mishaps and wedding-day disasters called ‘The World’s Worst Weddings’.

            Each programme treated its viewers to a parade of doomed brides tumbling down church steps, or skidding backwards and landing legs-in-the-air on dance floors. Beautifully crafted, four-tiered wedding cakes toppled slowly sideways like Pisan towers and then collapsed into rubbly heaps of icing. Horses bolted with their empty landaus from the church gates. The weather outside the churches was always turbulent, lifting the brides’ dresses up over their heads to reveal saucy bridal lingerie, or whipping the top hats off the heads of the men who chased them through churchyards like farmers after troupes of grey hens.

            This anthology of crookedly shot, poorly focused visions of minor catastrophes had Daphne and Colin in stitches. They laughed until they hurt. They winced at painful bits (drunken sword-dancing, marquees bulging with stored rain), drew in their breath, gave each other mock-horrified looks, groaned, giggled, shook their heads pityingly and put their hands over their mouths.

            By the end of the programme, as the credits rolled quickly over a reprise of the choicest clips, Colin and Daphne felt exhausted. Their jaws ached and their voices were hoarse. But at the same time they felt refreshed and reassured by the sense they had that other people’s lives were a train of small calamities, and that while their own lives might not be everything they’d wished for, at least they were ordered havens of static objects and common sense people. The World’s Worst Weddings renewed for them each week their sense of their own worth as people while fortifying them for the routine struggles of the week ahead.

            Daphne was manager of the Erith branch of BurgerWorld where she supervised a crew of twenty surly teenagers and two shift managers. She could handle (though rarely needed to) one hundred and fifty customers an hour. She was a good branch manager. She had, in the words of Dale, her area executive, ‘ketchup in her blood’. She was blonde, wide, buxom and clever. She was forty-seven.

            Colin her coeval, childhood sweetheart and husband of thirty years was a bus driver. He had power-steered red double-deckers from Trafalgar Square through the suburbs of South East London for almost as long as they’d been married. In the early days he had sat alone in the forward cab of a Routemaster, obeying the bells, buzzers and knocks of his conductor. Then, at the beginning of the Seventies, he was asked to merge two people into his one body and become both driver and conductor of the new pay-as-you-enter buses. It had been difficult at first, and he felt bad about the conductors who lost their jobs, but he managed the transition with some panache. He has twice been a finalist in the South East Bus Driver of the Year Awards. He genuinely cared about his human cargo. He took corners carefully. When he stopped he stopped gently and his passengers all nodded in unison. His sedentary life and fondness for the odd pint had given him a roly-poly figure and a thickening of fat around the neck. His hair was dark but thinning on top, combed back and out of the way behind his ears, half an inch short of unkempt. His teeth were sharp, symmetrical, stained with cigar tobacco.

            He was stretched out on the couch, still in his bus drivers” uniform which, with its wine-coloured blazer and striped tie, made him look like a ridiculous schoolboy. This added to the shock Daphne felt when he turned his brick-red face, still damp with laughing, towards her and said, in a voice quiet with excitement,

“Love, I think I’m pregnant.”

-2-

Daphne was busy with tomatoes, slicing them in a machine called a tomato shark.

India, one of her shift managers, was preparing burger cartons. There was a lull in trade at BurgerWorld, as there usually was mid-afternoon. India hated these lulls as they made the time drag, although she found a simple satisfaction in the clever origami of her burger cartons. A flat card envelope is extracted from the packet which, with a deft twist of the thumbs, flips into a three-dimensional box with hinged lid, catch and steam vents.

Of all the crew India was closest to Daphne. They did not meet outside the workplace (apart from the Christmas do) but in BurgerWorld they regarded each other as friends. India liked Daphne’s boldness, her sturdiness. She admired her. She thought if Daphne was a building she would be a provincial town hall – solid, sensible, yet not without ornamentation and humour. India would be one of those little striped tents workmen erect over manholes. So she reacted at first with disbelief and bewilderment when she noticed Daphne was crying.

She left her teetering tower of yet-to-be-filled cartons and walked hesitantly towards Daphne as if to a statue that had moved. Closer she could see it was true – Daphne, good old blonde-haired, piss-taking, dependable Daphne was crying. The water was spilling out of her eyes, falling off the end of her nose and salting her tomatoes.

“Are you crying, Daph?” India uselessly asked.

Daphne, whose head was hanging, suddenly drew her face back, as if to make the tears withdraw into her eyes. It was as though she hadn’t known she was crying. She fumbled in her pocket for a hanky, couldn’t find one. India gave her a serviette.

“Stupid,” said Daphne, holding the paper to her eyes like a blindfold, still with her other hand on the lever of the tomato shark.

“Anything I can do?” Said India.

Daphne took a deep breath, held it for what seemed like a dangerous length of time, then exhaled loudly. She took the paper away from her eyes, looked at India with a half smile that was meant to say ‘I’m fine now’, then collapsed into uncontrollable sobs. Some of the other staff noticed. Baseball-capped heads peered round the sides of broilers, or beneath frier hoods. India took hold of Daphne’s shaking frame (the first time, she realised, that she’d touched her manager) and guided her into the cramped space of telephones, files, lists and memos that served as an office.

“What’s up Daph? What’s going on?”

            “I can’t say. Nothing. Sod it.”

“Don’t you think you should talk about it?”

Daphne gave a choked laugh.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Try the beginning.”

Daphne compressed her lips, shook her head so slightly it was like trembling.

“Is it your old man? Is there something wrong with Colin?”

This was an educated guess. Colin’s health was a regular topic of conversation between Daphne and India - his latest digestive problem or heart attack scare, his creeping arthritis, even his occasional lack of libido. India had never met Colin but she thought she must know more about his body than his own doctor.

India could tell by Daphne’s stillness that she’d hit the mark.

“What is it? Is he ill?”

“It sounds so stupid, India love. I don’t know how to say it. I haven’t told anyone, not even my Mum.”

“You can tell me.”

“Well I’ve got to tell someone…” Daphne was whispering now, even though there was no one within earshot, “…a few months ago – about six months ago – Colin got this idea into his head – I mean he really believes it, that he’s…”

“Yes?” India’s eyes were round and expectant.

“He thinks he’s pregnant.”

Silence.

Then India let out a giggle, quickly put her hand to her mouth as if to catch it, but she carried on giggling into her hand, muffled.

“Don’t India, please love.”

“I’m sorry, but this has got to be a joke, yeah?”

“That’s what I thought at first. A joke. A sick joke. We gave up trying to have kids ten years ago. I’ve told you all about that. There isn’t a day goes by, even now, when I don’t think about the kids we could have had if things had worked out. I could have been a gran by now. But I thought Colin had forgotten all about it. You know he never was that bothered, not really, even when we were going up to the clinic every week. He was doing it for me really. But now it looks like something’s got to him… He’s started converting our spare room back into a nursery. We had it as a nursery when we were going for the treatment. Just hoping we could put a baby in it. Just to have the chance to muck around with baby things. When we finally called it a day we gutted the room. It broke my heart. We didn’t throw anything away, it was funny, but suddenly everyone we knew needed baby stuff. Most of it went to my sister – the clothes, the cot, the majority of the toys. We painted over the Tiggers with oatmeal, then I used the room for my china painting. You know me and my china. We never miss a craft fair. I had a little kiln in there and everything. But now he’s gone and painted new Tiggers on the walls. He’s splashed out on a posh cot with brass bits on. He says we have to have everything ready in time. It’s due in November.”

“Daphne, you’ve got to get him to a doctor. Get his head sorted out…”

“I know. The trouble is, in every other way he’s completely normal, you know, so Colinish, so bloody boringly Colinish. He’s still driving his buses, though he reckons he won’t fit behind the wheel for much longer. He’s given up the pipe and cigars. He doesn’t even have a drink now. He says he’s got to take care of himself. But what really frightens me is that I’m starting to believe him. It’s like I’m going mad as well. I find myself looking at his beer gut to see if it’s getting bigger…”

“And is it?”

Daphne allowed herself a brief, sneezy laugh.

“I keep thinking it is getting bigger. And he’s off the beer. When he’s asleep I put my hand on it and feel for movements. Maybe I do feel something kick, or is it just a bubble of wind? Then I’ll listen for a heartbeat. I can hear something, but is it just Colin’s heart. I don’t know…”

“But Daph, you’ve got to hold on to the true facts. You’ve got to remember he can’t be pregnant.”

“But why not?” Daphne’s voice had acquired a haughtiness that was new to India. India tried to match the tone,

“He’s a bloke isn’t he?”

Daphne closed her eyes dismissively.

“Colin spun me this long story about how he went to a clinic where they’re testing out a new type of fertility treatment, which means the man carrying the embryo instead of the woman.”

India is dismissive now.

“It’s true,” Daphne continued, “I’ve read up about it. There are people doing work on it right now. They say they don’t need any wombs, just a place in the body with a good blood supply. They’ve planted fertilised eggs on the outer wall of the large intestine of a male mouse and it’s gone on to give birth. I know they need one of my eggs but Colin says they kept some from when we were going for the treatment. He reckons they’ve got a whole dish of them up there. I know it’s rubbish but I can’t help thinking sometimes. And then I look at that huge tummy of his and it moves…”

“Daphne, I don’t want to know. Of course he hasn’t been to any clinic. He’s flipped his lid. He’s got to that age, all men get to it.”

Daphne laughed inwardly at the confidence with which eighteen-year-old India talked about men.

“His tomatoes have gone to pot. The whole crop. Every year he grows these wonderful tomatoes. They’ve got the best spot in the garden, sunny all day long. He even goes down the stables with a shovel so he can mulch the horseshit into them. They’re ready by late August. Well, this year he’s just left them. He’d lost interest by June. They were still green in August. He says he’s gone right off tomatoes now, because of his condition. We used to have such lovely salads,” Daphne looked across at the bowl of heaped tomato slices, like opened hearts. “I had to pick them myself. Still green. He wasn’t going to bother. I put them in brown paper bags and kept them under the stairs. They’re only just beginning to go yellow now. He has cravings for potatoes.”

India didn’t know what to say. She noticed a poster on the back of the door which reminded staff of the importance of ‘add-ons’, and provided a script which specified the exact phrasing to be used. If a customer wants a hamburger, staff must say ‘would you like fries with that?’ If a customer wants a hamburger with fries, staff must say ‘would you like a drink with that?’ BurgerWorld provides staff with a script for almost every possible interaction with a customer, from the cheery greetings to the cheery goodbyes. Staff are expected to follow these scripts to the letter. India found it very helpful at first, in dealing with customers, to have her words written for her in advance, but after a while she found that it damaged her ability to talk spontaneously outside the workplace. She wanted scripts for every social encounter, and had to work hard at relearning her ability to converse. Now, with Daphne, she longed again for guidance from head office.

“I’m out of my Depth, Daph.”

“I’m alright, India love. Get back to your prep. I’ll sort my old man out somehow.”

India went back to her prep, magicking cartons out of nothing. Daphne went back to slicing her tomatoes. They never, for the rest of their lives, say anything to each other on this subject again.

-3-

The World’s Worst Weddings is on. Daphne is watching it alone. Colin is having a lie-down upstairs.

Daphne isn’t finding the programme funny this week. She is watching it but the laughter isn’t coming. Those toppling wedding cakes just look sad now. The windy wedding days, flooded marquees, runaway carriages. One clip in particular makes her wince – when a groom faints during the ceremony, falls into his wife-to-be and knocks her to the floor.

But she watches the programme anyway, even though she hasn’t found it funny for weeks. It is November now. Last year this programme saw them into winter, took them up to Christmas. But Daphne wonders if she’ll watch it again.

Colin is watching it on the portable upstairs, which produces a stereophonic effect. The laughter from the programme is thus given a strangely haunting quality, as though it is not coming from the television, but from the house itself.

Daphne, as the programme finishes with a curious note of triumphalism, barely notices the call coming from upstairs. Colin’s weak voice comes down to her

“Daph, love.”

“What is it?” She calls back, slightly impatiently. For the last two weeks Colin has been off work and has spent most of the time in bed.

“Can you come up, love?”

She leaves it for a few minutes, clears away her mostly uneaten pizza, puts a half-empty coffee mug into the sink, wipes the worktop and then goes wearily upstairs. Six months of worrying have exhausted her.

She walks into the bedroom. Colin is lying on his back on top of the bedclothes. His abdomen looks huge to her, suddenly, a great dome, all blubber, she is sure, but it has grown anyway over the last six months. He has the tv remote in his hand and is gripping it so hard his knuckles are creamy white. The portable set on the dressing table is a babble of advertising.

“What’s up?” She was going to say, but on seeing Colin’s face realises. He is red, his breath is short and his face is loose with fear, the eyes helpless.

“It’s starting, love.”

Daphne sits beside him. His whole body seems to clench and unclench like a fist. She puts her hand on his clammy forehead.

“Take it easy, love,” she says, “Just stay calm.”

“I feel funny in my tummy, Daph,” he says, “Love, I can feel it coming out. I think my waters have broken.”

She notices a dark stain on the bed spreading out from between Colin’s legs.

“I’m scared, Daph, all this stuff’s coming out.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Can you stop it coming out, Love, get a towel or something.”

She goes to the bathroom, returns with a bath towel they were still paying the catalogue for.

“Open your legs, Love.”

He opens them. An unpleasant odour rises. Daphne presses the towel up against him.

“Shall I get the doctor, Colin?”

“No,” he says urgently, “No, please.”

“A midwife?”

“I think it’s too late, Love.”

The bed is warm and wet. Suddenly Colin clasps his swollen belly, shouts to Daphne,

“It’s coming, Daph. Get something to catch it. Quickly, Love, a bucket, anything.”

She rushes to the bathroom again. There is nothing suitable. She has to go downstairs to the kitchen. The only thing she can find is their non-stick wok. Daphne has only used it once in five years.

Colin is moaning when she returns. She puts the lips of the wok up against his perineum. Thin, cloudy liquid dribbles into it. The bedroom reeks. Colin is crying, tears running sideways down his face, his lips wide, his tongue like a plump little plum in his mouth.

Later Daphne clears up. She yanks the sheets off the bed, piles them into the already overloaded washing basket, then wonders what to do with the mattress. Colin is downstairs on the couch in a dressing gown. She has given him a bath and he smells nice. After she has sorted the bedding out Daphne comes downstairs into the tv room and kisses Colin on the crown of the head, where his hair is thinnest, taking in the fragrance of his scalp.

“How about a drink?” She says.

Colin thinks for a moment, then nods, almost apologetically.

“A nice gin and tonic?”

Colin nods again.

Daphne goes to the kitchen, takes a tray of ice cubes out of the fridge. A dozen nuggets of frozen water. As usual she has trouble extracting them. She bends the tray as much as its metal will allow, and there is a tired, creaking sound. Then something snaps and an ice cube pops out and clatters on the worktop. She has to use a knife to get the rest out, levering dangerously at the chipped edges of each cube. There must be an easier way of making ice, she thinks as she divides her four cubes between two tumblers, splashes some gin and tonic water on top of them and listens to the wheezes and cracks as they expand into the warmth of the alcohol.

She takes the drinks into the tv room and sits with Colin for the rest of the evening, then they go to bed. Daphne leaves the tray of ice cubes out on the worktop. She forgets to put them back in the fridge.

In the morning, when she comes down into the kitchen, yawning and almost happy, her heart falters when she sees the tray of ice cubes on the worktop; it is a trembling, lively, blood-warm tray of water.