Chapter 8
WHEELING HER BICYCLE ACROSS THE YARD afterwards, she felt satisfied.
She’d done it, and they’d enjoyed it. I love yoga, from the mouth of a child who didn’t yet know how to pretend, and from other little mouths too.
Marian would relay that to Susan, and Susan would ring at some stage and ask if Lydia felt like making it a regular thing, and Lydia would say yes.
It would be a nice landmark in the week.
She reached the school gates, and had just placed a foot on her pedal when she noticed that Greta’s café across the way was open. She’d never been inside: anytime she’d passed it, with or without Damien, the blind had been pulled down in the single window, but today it was up.
With her taste for coffee having abandoned her, it was the last place she’d choose to visit – but Greta had been kind, and Lydia wanted to support her, and maybe she could get something harmless, like peppermint tea.
She leant her bicycle against the nearby presbytery wall, smothering the small qualm that rose up at the thought of leaving it unlocked. You’re not in Dublin now.
She pushed open the café door and stepped inside.
Her first impression was of a small room – no more than half a dozen tables, two occupied.
A counter at the top and Greta behind it, in the act of placing something on a plate – but before Lydia could advance, the heady, coffee-laden atmosphere caused her insides to rise in sudden protest, and she was forced to withdraw.
Outside, her face prickling with sweat, she moved out of sight of the window and bent over, hands on thighs, praying she wouldn’t throw up, and hoping she was unobserved – but she heard the café door open, and felt a palm coming to rest on her back.
‘Breathe,’ Greta ordered, and Lydia obeyed until the sick sensation receded, and she was able to raise her head.
‘Sorry. It was the smell of the coffee.’
‘Don’t apologise. Come.’ Greta led her down by the side of the café and through a gate that led into a little walled-in courtyard with a garden seat, its wood silvered with age.
‘Sit,’ Greta commanded, and vanished through a door that must have led back into the café.
Lydia remained where she was, feeling foolish, until Greta returned with a steaming mug, a rug and a cushion.
‘Ginger tea,’ she said, handing it over before tucking the rug around Lydia and settling the cushion at her back. ‘Good for the stomach.’
‘Thank you. I used to love coffee, but lately I can’t tolerate it.’
Greta studied her. ‘You are too thin.’
Like Lydia’s mother. ‘I’m not eating much,’ Lydia admitted. ‘I’m a bit wary of food: I’ve been throwing up.’ She wasn’t sure why she was saying all this. She hadn’t even told the doctor, when she’d asked.
‘Drink the tea. How long has this been going on?’
‘. . . Since the accident.’ Wasn’t it obvious? Damien’s death had thrown everything out of kilter.
‘When was your last period?’
The question came out of nowhere. Lydia, in the act of raising the mug, frowned. ‘What?’
‘Weeks? Months?’
‘. . . I don’t know.’ She couldn’t think. In her mind’s eye she saw the box of tampons she kept in the bathroom cabinet. When had she opened it last?
Greta looked directly at her, as she always did. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you are pregnant.’
The word echoed in the brief silence it left in its wake. It drifted about the little yard until Lydia found her voice. ‘Pregnant? No, I’m not. Definitely not.’
‘You are quite sure?’
Another silence. Lydia opened her mouth and closed it again. Pregnant? No. Absurd. Impossible. Ridiculous.
Greta sat next to her. ‘You are not eating. You feel sick after food, and the smell of coffee makes you want to throw up. And it sounds that maybe you have not had a period in some time.’
Her voice was calm, her words slow and clear, as if Lydia was a child who needed to be taught. ‘Is it possible,’ she asked, ‘that you are pregnant?’
Lydia stared dumbly at her. It wasn’t impossible. They’d taken a few chances during the snow-bound days following the wedding, just for the hell of it. In for a penny, he’d said. New businesses, new baby, and it had felt like another part of the big adventure.
No. She couldn’t be pregnant. She couldn’t do that without him. Out of the question. She didn’t want to do it alone, didn’t want a child who had a mother but no father.
She reined in her galloping thoughts, conscious of Greta’s gaze still fixed on her. ‘It’s possible,’ she said slowly, ‘but it’s also possible that I’m not pregnant. Everything’s been so . . . awful. It might just be that, mightn’t it?’
‘You need to see Doctor Avril – or take a test,’ Greta said in the same composed tone.
She was right, but the thought of doing either filled Lydia with dread. ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’
Greta frowned. ‘Of course not.’ She rose. ‘Finish your tea. You must find out, Lydia.’
Pregnant. The possibility hadn’t once occurred to her, but it would explain a lot. She sat cradling her mug in the quiet space, inhaling the steam that was flavoured with ginger.
Pregnant.
In the end, after two sleepless nights, she took the bus to the town and bought two pregnancy tests in a chemist where nobody knew her.
The following morning she took both tests, one after the other, and sat on the side of the bath in shock after they gave her the same result, after they’d told her that sometime during their six blissful days of marriage, she had conceived.
She should have known. She should at least have considered pregnancy as a reason for her problems, but she’d been too deep in grief, too stunned by loss – and now the proof was there, two tests giving the same result, and she had no choice but to see it.
It felt like someone’s sick joke, a cruel, triumphant ta-dah! from some evil cosmic magician. She couldn’t cope with it, not when the wound was still so raw, when she could still close her eyes and see his face, hear his voice and his laugh, smell his skin.
But this would be his baby, part of him.
It would have his DNA – it might look like him, laugh like him.
It would carry him on, like a legacy he’d left in her care.
His final surprise, even if he hadn’t planned it.
Even if she didn’t want it – did she? Oh, she didn’t know what she wanted.
She hadn’t a clue what she wanted, except for him.
She wanted him, every second of every day.
She blotted her eyes with a towel, overwhelmed by sadness at the thought that he would never know, never meet his child. She bagged and binned the tests, and washed her hands. She paced the apartment, her morning yoga for once forgotten as she tried to think straight.
Her last period, as far as she could recall, had occurred in the middle of December, when she’d been rushing about making wedding preparations, and now it was March. Did that make this her third month? When should she count from?
She went back to bed, burrowing beneath the duvet, wanting to shut everything out. She tried to push away this new catastrophe and think of nothing at all, to enter a state of mental blankness, but her mind circled back stubbornly, refusing to let it go.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want a baby. They’d talked about children lots of times during their engagement. Having been an only child and envying her friends with siblings, she’d wanted four, two of each. He’d said he’d be happy to take whatever came.
They’d played with names. Sophie, Aisling, John, Adam. They’d planned to wait until they’d got Chance House up and running – but after the wedding, giddy with happiness, they’d broken all the rules.
And now, barely a wife, she was a pregnant widow – and soon, within months, she would become a single parent. What had she done to deserve any of it?
Lying in bed with no distraction was worse than being up. She threw back the duvet and got into yoga gear. She went through the motions in the studio, but for the first time it didn’t pull her out of her thoughts. It gave her no peace, her racing mind refusing to calm.
Afterwards, showered and dressed again, she made ginger tea from one of the sachets Greta had given her.
She tried to eat a slice of toast but it defeated her, and she threw most of it into the compost caddy by the sink.
She took her jacket from the hall and jammed on a woolly hat.
She wrapped a scarf around her neck and went out to the shed for her bicycle and helmet.
She didn’t question what she was doing. She moved instinctively, drawn to a place she’d been avoiding since January.
She cycled into the village and down the main street.
She passed the always open gates of the presbytery, and Marge the hairdresser in her salon.
She saw the closed door and pulled-down blind of Greta’s café, and the schoolyard, quiet between breaks on a Friday morning, and Andrew in a white coat behind the counter in his shop.
Pregnant. It felt like the word was written in neon letters on her forehead. It felt like everyone she met would know instantly. She left the village and passed the creamery on her right, and a farm beyond that. She slowed then, not wanting to arrive, her feet heavy on the pedals.
At her destination she dismounted. She leant the bicycle against the old stone wall and rubbed eyes that burned with tiredness and willed herself to be strong.
The graveyard was built on a gentle slope, around the ruins of a small church.
That morning, it appeared to be empty of people.
She pushed open the stiff iron gate and made her way up the incline until she located the grave, where Damien’s paternal grandparents and Brendan’s infant sister had earlier been buried.
The earth they’d dug up in January and then replaced was still mounded. A small bunch of flowers, not withered, leant against the headstone, next to a red jar with a lit candle in it. Brendan or Kathleen or Tom. Did Kathleen visit her son’s grave?