The Pregnancy Bond

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AFTERWARDS Jake had very little memory of leaving Olympia’s apartment, or of getting home. The ride down in the lift blended into the cab Kelly had left waiting outside the building, getting into the back, taking refuge in Kelly’s arms. She held him close, rocking him gently, murmuring words of comfort to ease an agony that she didn’t understand. When they reached the flat she thrust money at the driver, still holding Jake’s hand in her own, and drew him quickly into the building. When they were safely home she enfolded him again in a passion of protectiveness.

‘You’re shivering,’ she said.

‘I can’t stop,’ he said through chattering teeth.

‘I’ll put the heating on.’

‘No, it’s not that kind of shivering.’

‘Jake, can you tell me what happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I don’t know. Suddenly everything was dark and there was nothing in the world but fear and despair. But then I remembered there was you, and I knew if I reached you I’d be safe. Hold me. Hold me!’

‘Yes, darling, yes-’ The word slipped out without her knowing. ‘I’m here. Hold onto me.’

She too was in a kind of shock, stunned by the suddenness with which the world had turned on its head. She’d sent him off to Olympia, telling herself that she was doing the best thing for both of them. In her mind she’d followed every step of his evening: the romantic candlelit dinner, the journey back to Olympia’s apartment, the soft music as they undressed and went to bed.

She’d tried to shut her thoughts off at this stage but it had been impossible. She knew Jake’s body as nobody else would ever know it. She knew how he made love, the little caresses that excited him. She’d known him both as a tender, considerate lover, and a fiercely thrilling one. Which would he be with Olympia?

And then, when her torment was at its height, he’d called her, imploring her help.

Now she sat beside him on the sofa, feeling his trembling abate, wondering what terrors had invaded him, and why suddenly at this moment? She didn’t press him to talk; he wasn’t ready. It was enough that he was in her arms, needing her as never before.

He had said she was his wife, as though their marriage was an unbroken continuum. And he had claimed her child as his, as though in his heart he had always guessed. But he had not said these things to her, only to others, and perhaps they’d been only the desperate words of a desperate man. She would know nothing until he repeated them to her.

She, in her turn, had called him her darling, and she knew that it had always been true. Her love had never died. She’d merely buried it, hoping to forget how to find it again. Now she knew that had been a vain hope. While Jake retained even a shadow of his old cocky self she could fence with him, bicker with him, defend herself from him. But his vulnerability broke her heart. As long as he needed her, she was his.

‘You’re cold,’ she said at last. ‘You should be in bed.’

He seemed unable to move, as though he was drained of will, but he let her urge him to his feet and into the bedroom. She was shocked at the sight of him. His face had the muddy pallor of an old man’s and there were black smudges beneath his eyes.

‘Stay with me,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want to be alone. Please, Kelly.’

‘Of course I will, my dear. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me get my things.’

She slipped away. She was gone just a couple of minutes, but when she returned, dressed for bed, Jake was standing at his door, watching for her with something in his eyes that it hurt her to see.

‘I’m coming,’ she said quickly, taking his hand.

As they lay together in bed he told her about the evening, keeping back nothing.

‘I was going to take her to bed,’ he said bluntly, ‘but I couldn’t. There was nothing there for her. Nothing. Just like last time.’

‘Last time?’

‘In Paris. I always told you the truth about that. I backed off at the last minute. You seemed to be there, and you wouldn’t let me do anything that would destroy our love. So I made excuses and got drunk. And then the joke was that you wouldn’t believe me. But it was true all the time.’

‘I believe you now,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I’d believed you then, but I didn’t know you in those days as I do now.’

He fell silent and she just held him, knowing that he must take his own time. Inwardly she was weeping for him.

‘It was like sliding down into the pit of hell,’ he said at last. ‘As though my mind has been holding all the bad things behind bars and now they’ve got out. I don’t know what to do.’ He tried to force himself to speak sensibly. ‘Of course it’s only temporary. I’m all right now.’

But his voice shook even as he said it, and she tightened her arms.

‘It will be all right,’ she promised. ‘I’ll call the doctor tomorrow-’

Some old reflex action made him bristle at the word. ‘I don’t need a doctor-’

‘Yes, you do,’ she said firmly. ‘No argument. I’ve decided.’

At that he even managed a shaky laugh. ‘Yes, dear.’

She picked up the echo, as he’d intended, and smiled into the darkness. But her heart was heavy because she knew they’d just embarked on the dreadful road that Dr Ainsley had warned her about. It was sharp and thorny, and the end of it was hidden from her.

When she called the doctor next morning she was half afraid Jake would protest again, but he was too deep in his own private agony to say anything.

The local doctor was a brisk, well-meaning man with little imagination. To him, clinical depression was something to be treated with drugs, and time would do the rest. The medication he prescribed was strong and usually effective. Kelly learned that much from a talk with a fellow student who was doing medical research. But she felt the doctor had looked at only one side of the problem. Jake needed more. From the way he’d reached out to her she guessed it was something only she could give, but as yet she wasn’t certain what it was. She could only watch and wait, and hope that the moment would find her ready.

Jake had never before suffered clinical depression. He’d thought he had, when he was first in the hospital. Now he knew that experience had been nothing, just a bout of being down in the dumps-bad enough, but not to be compared with this bleak hell.

The medication was only partly effective. It dulled the edge of his consciousness, so that instead of the darkness being full of sharp weapons to taunt him it was a place of diffuse misery.

By day he slumped into coma-like sleep, by night he lay awake tormented by demons. They came from inside him, and had names like futility, guilt, hopelessness. From this perspective his entire past life seemed empty, his future non-existent.

His body seemed to be made of lead so that dragging one foot in front of another was an almighty effort. He understood nothing that was happening to him. Faces came and went. Voices echoed in his head. There was Kelly telling him that all would soon be well because Dr Ainsley had predicted this.

‘He thought it would happen sooner…and then you recovered…you were so strong, it was like you’d got away with it…’

You were so strong…

He tried to remember when he’d ever really been strong. What had his strength ever been but an illusion, depending on one crucial prop? Then the prop had been removed and he’d seen himself with awful clarity. While Kelly was there, Jack the lad, a bouncing fire-cracker who could enthral the world. Without her, nothing.

Day after day his misery blotted out almost everything else and the world reached him through a fog. The only reality was Kelly, who had quietly moved her things back into his room, and spent each night with him in the double bed. When the fog was heaviest her face was still there, tense with anxiety, watching him with fearful eyes. She took several days off, making various unconvincing excuses, and gradually it dawned on him that she was afraid to leave him alone.

That brought the darkness down again. Her chance was slipping away because of him. History was repeating itself, and it mustn’t be allowed to happen.

‘It’s all right,’ he told her, concentrating hard on the words. ‘I’ll still be here when you get back. I’m not-going anywhere.’

At last he persuaded her to leave, and endured several hellish hours when the walls seemed to be closing in on him. But when she returned at the end of the day he managed a smile.

‘The kettle’s on,’ he said with a fair pretence of cheerfulness. ‘Sit down while I make you some tea.’

‘How have you been?’ she asked, looking anxiously into his face.

‘It’s getting easier,’ he lied.

He knew she doubted him, and he managed to keep smiling until he was in the kitchen. There his control slipped and he stood clinging onto a shelf, heaving with distress while sweat poured down his face. But a movement behind him made him pull himself together and hoist the bright mask into place before she saw his face again.

He had his reward next morning, when she left the apartment with an easier mind. He gave her a cheery wave through the window before turning away as the waves of blackness engulfed him again.

Once he called Dr Ainsley. ‘Kelly said you knew this was going to happen.’

‘You took two bullets, and that’s enough to traumatise any man,’ Ainsley said cheerfully. ‘Inside, you never did recover quite as well as you made out, and pretending just makes things worse. What medication are you taking?’ When he heard he grunted. ‘That’s all right. It’s good stuff. Give it time to do its work and leave the rest to Kelly.’

As days passed the fog lifted a little but the world still reached him at a distance. He read his mail, only half taking it in, but stray words and phrases clung, worrying him. Somewhere out there were things he should be thinking about, taking seriously, but they were muffled, and what could he do about them anyway?

One night he managed to sleep for a few minutes, then awoke sharply. There was a light under the door. He forced himself up and went out, to find Kelly lying on the sofa, frowning as she read a book. Something about her struck him forcibly.

‘You’re going to have a baby,’ he whispered.

She jumped up, full of alarm. ‘Jake-’

‘It’s all right, I’m not crazy.’ He let her draw him down until he was sitting beside her. ‘I knew you were pregnant-I did, didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ she said gently, ‘you knew.’

‘I remember now.’ He shook his head as though trying to free it of a swarm of bees. ‘There’s something I can’t quite-why are you sitting here alone?’

‘I’m fine-’

‘Why does nobody ever protect you?’ he asked wildly. ‘Why is it always you doing the caring? Your husband should have protected you, but we all know about him, don’t we?’

‘I don’t think anybody really knew about him,’ Kelly said gently.

‘A jerk. He let you down all the time. Now he’s letting you down again.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’ll show you.’

He hauled himself up and made his way back to the bedroom, returning with a paper which he put into her hand. It was a bank statement showing that his money was fast vanishing.

‘Not just a jerk, but a stupid jerk,’ Jake said morosely. ‘He never bothered to save when times were good. He spent it all on enjoying life.’

‘He spent it on his wife too,’ Kelly remembered. ‘All those presents-’

‘Which weren’t what she wanted. When trouble came he didn’t have any savings. After I was shot the firm’s insurance company made a pay-out, although they used a technicality to make it as little as possible. That’s what we’ve been living on. I thought I’d be back at work long before now, because I was “Jake Lindley” who could cope with anything. But look at me. A mess.’

Kelly was staring at the bank statement and a resolution was forming in her head.

‘Say something, please,’ he begged.

‘All right.’ She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his face. She was about to take a huge risk, and she called all her love to help her judge the size of the gamble.

Vaguely she knew that she’d misjudged once before, driving him into Olympia’s arms, helping to bring this nightmare down on him. If she misread him again she might condemn him to disaster, but if her courage failed he might languish in his present misery forever.

‘I’ll say this,’ she told him. ‘I think it’s about time you started work again.’

He stared. ‘You think anyone’s going to give me work as I am?’

‘You’re not going to wait for people to give you work. You can make your own. It’s time you started on that book you always talked about. Heaven knows you’ve got the material. All your experiences in so many countries, and then getting shot. That book will sell, if you write it quickly. Leave it too long and the moment will pass. You’ve got all this time at home. Use it.’

In the silence she saw the dawning of interest in his eyes. ‘Do you-really think I could?’

‘I know you could. Jake Lindley can do anything.’

‘No-no,’ he shook his head in agitation. ‘This isn’t “Jake Lindley”. I’m not sure he’ll ever be around again. It’s just Jake.’

She understood.

‘It was always Jake for me,’ she said. ‘I never much cared for “Jake Lindley”.’

‘But a book-I haven’t done a long project in ages- I work in soundbites now-’

‘Then stop working in soundbites and start having long, joined-up, thought-out opinions again,’ she said urgently. ‘Jake, you still have all that. You haven’t lost it, just mislaid it a little.’

She was gripping his hands, looking eagerly into his eyes, and at that moment she looked closer to the seventeen-year-old who’d first adored him than he’d seen for a long time. It was the haunting echo of that memory that made him say, ‘I’ll do it-if you think I can-even though my head’s full of cotton wool, so that I can’t think how to put two words together.’

‘You don’t have to write it yet. Just do a bit of research and work out the outline. You can sell that to a publisher first.’

‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ he said with a touch of admiration. ‘You’ll be wanting commission as my agent next.’

‘You bet I will!’

He almost laughed, and for a moment she thought she’d revived the spark in him, but then his face became drained again.

‘Kelly, this is crazy. I can’t embark on the long haul when it’s as much as I can do to struggle up out of the pit every morning.’

‘Forget the long haul,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re looking at it the wrong way.’

‘Am I?’ He was watching her closely, as if waiting for her to produce the key that would open the vital door.

‘Just think about the first step. When you’ve done that we’ll worry about the second step, but never more than one at a time. So you must decide what the first step actually is.’

She was looking at him, waiting for a decision, and he fought to clear his mind, which had become cotton wool again. The first step…the first step…

‘My notes,’ he said at last. ‘I need to go back over them-and tapes-things from the last few years-to refresh my memory-’

‘Good. Where are they?’

‘In my flat. I’ll have to go there-’

‘First thing tomorrow.’

It was barely dawn when she called a cab and they went to his flat together. But when they reached the front door she hesitated.

‘Would you rather I waited out here?’

‘Why should I want that?’ he said, puzzled.

‘You wouldn’t let me come here before, to fetch your clothes. You sent Olympia.’

‘Olympia’s never been here. A social worker attached to the hospital did it for me. I guess I just didn’t want you to see it.’

She began to understand when he opened the door. This was no home, but a soulless cage. One room to live in, one to sleep in, and nothing that spoke of the man who lived there. It was as though his real self had gone somewhere else on the day he moved in. He’d kept her away before because this place revealed too much of what had happened to him without her.

She looked up to find him watching her closely, asking if she understood the things that were beyond words. She smiled and squeezed his hand. As he began going through his shelves she passed on into his bedroom.

Here there was more bleakness. A plain bed, a wardrobe, a bureau. No ornaments, photos, mementoes. Nothing to remind him of anyone he’d ever known. Not even herself, she realised with a pang of disappointment.

Suddenly she couldn’t stand it a moment longer. She began pulling open drawers, seeking something, anything, to reveal his inner life.

And she found it.

It was all there together in the bottom drawer, starting with their wedding pictures. They were excellent, a gift from a photographer friend. There was the absurdly young-looking eighteen-year-old girl and the scrawny young man. She frowned at the sight of Jake. Where was the confident young god of her memory? Had he really been this slightly loutish-looking individual with the unfinished air? And his expression, full of adoration for the girl beside him? Why hadn’t she noticed that at the time? Perhaps because her own adoration had filled her horizons.

Over the years he’d taken his own pictures of her, and there was one where everything had come together perfectly. Focus, colour, pose were all brilliant, and in the centre was a girl, laughing with joy because the man she loved was giving her all his attention. Her head was thrown back and happiness seemed to pour from her. Jake had blown this one up and framed it to keep. And then he’d hidden it away in secret.

Now, she thought, she knew everything. But she was wrong. The drawer had two final secrets to yield. First was a pair of baby bootees, one larger than the other. Kelly stared at them a long time, wondering about this man whose heart was so much deeper than she’d suspected.

But it was the last item of all that made her cry: a blue furry elephant, his trunk knocked permanently out of shape on the day she’d thumped Jake with him.

Now she remembered him, that night in the park, saying, ‘It was definitely Dolph the elephant. I know because I-because his trunk was always wonky after that.’

He knew because he’d kept him all these years, grieving for the child they’d lost as deeply as herself, but unable to say so. And perhaps grieving also for those early happy days that had gone. She bent her head and her tears fell on Dolph’s fur.

She felt Jake’s presence as he sat on the bed beside her, and his arms went around her.

‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘You can give him to your baby. He won’t mind about the trunk.’

‘It’s not that,’ she wept. ‘It’s everything-we had so much and we lost it.’

He drew her close and she sobbed freely on his shoulder. Now it was his turn to comfort her, and he did his unpractised best.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ he told her. ‘I never really did. Perhaps we never could have kept what we had. We were both so young, and I was clumsy. You had all those exam passes and all I had was “front” and “attitude”. I made them do a good job for me, but in the end they’re not enough. When you got pregnant I was so relieved. It gave me the chance to tie you to me so that you couldn’t escape. Not very nice behaviour, but I wasn’t a very nice character. Look at me-’ He’d taken up the wedding picture. ‘I was a bit of an oaf in those days. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, so I grabbed with both hands.’

‘I was-the best thing-you loved me?’

‘I’ve never loved anyone in my life as much as I’ve loved you. And I never will. All I wanted was for you to love me, and somehow I could never quite believe that you did.’

‘Love you?’ she echoed, astonished. ‘But Jake, I adored you. You must have known that. I positively hero-worshipped you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew you hero-worshipped me, but that’s not quite the same as love. It was quite scary. I kept waiting for you to discover that I had feet of clay. I reckoned you’d dump me when that happened. In the end you did, but I can’t complain. We had eight years, and that was more than I hoped for.’

At first she was too shocked to speak.

‘But-but it wasn’t like that,’ she stammered at last. ‘It was always me scurrying around in your shadow, afraid I was boring you. You achieved so much-’

‘Only because you told me I could. I was a bum. I had a big mouth and I could talk my way into jobs, but I usually talked my way out again because I annoyed people by being too clever by half. Then I met you, and you actually admired me, which nobody had ever done before. If my name was mentioned people used to say, “Oh, him!”’

‘Jake, that’s not true-’

‘It is true, but you never knew. You made me see myself through your eyes, believe that I could be what you thought me. And then when-when we broke up, you made me see myself through your eyes again, someone who’d taken everything and given back nothing. That’s really why I agreed to the divorce. I reckoned you deserved to be free of me.’ He gave a snort of self-condemning laughter. ‘Even so, I convinced myself that you’d back off at the last minute. I never thought of your flying straight into the arms of another man.’

‘I didn’t, Jake, honestly I didn’t.’

‘What about Carl?’

‘What about him? He’s not my baby’s father.’

He grew still, searching her face. ‘Is that true?’

‘It’s true. Jake, you know who this child’s father is. You do. You’ve always known, really.’

He shook his head helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything any more. It’s no use asking me to work things out. It’s all gone. Everything I used to have or be, it’s all gone.’

‘No, it hasn’t. You’ve still got me, you’ve still got our baby, and you’ve still got your talents.’

He barely seemed to hear her. He laid his hand over her swelling stomach, only just touching it.

‘Our baby,’ he whispered. ‘Ours?’

‘Yours,’ she said softly.

She wished she could see his face, but his head was bent. Gradually he slipped to the floor, resting his head against the swell, and beneath her hands she could feel the violent shaking of his shoulders. She tried to speak, but the effort died. No words would be adequate. No words were needed. She put her arms as far around him as she could and held him quietly while he sobbed.

This might have been despair at an added burden, but her instincts told her that he was weeping for joy. Once she would have found that hard to believe, but they’d travelled far together in the last few months. He was clinging on desperately to anything that would keep him sane in the middle of chaos, and now he had new hope.

‘Tell me again,’ he said huskily. ‘Say this is my child.’

‘Darling, of course it’s yours. Who else’s could it be?’

‘But I thought-’

‘There was never anyone but you. How could there be? I divorced you because I thought I’d lost you already. When you turned up at the party I wanted you to see me as the belle of the ball, for the sake of my pride. But the truth was I still loved you, even though I wouldn’t admit it to either of us. Afterwards, how could I tell you what that night meant to me?’

‘Can you tell me now?’ he whispered.

‘I love you, Jake. I always have and I always will. This baby is yours, and I want you to be there, always, to be his father.’

‘I’m not much of a bargain in my present state.’

‘Stop talking about yourself like that,’ she said fiercely. ‘You’re mine, and I’m never letting you go again. Clear everything out of this place. You’re not coming back here. I’m taking you home for good.’

His answer was to lean his head against her breast, spreading his arms to encompass her and their child.

‘I am home,’ he said.