She noticed too, and immediately detached from me. ‘We … I can’t …’ she said. ‘Your father –’
‘I’m nothing like him.’
‘I know you’re not. I never kissed him. I mean … he forced me, it wasn’t like … this.’
We kissed again, passionately. Our mouths a perfect match. And then I moved away.
‘Goodnight, Lindy.’
‘But –’
‘I love you,’ I said as I locked the door behind me.
It took six years but by 1996 I was sure she loved me. I was 99 per cent certain of it. By the time we consummated our relationship in 1992, I was twenty-five and she was twenty-four. She had been terribly traumatized by my father, so I let her set the pace and, though it was glacial, she slowly learned that I could not and would not hurt her, and nor could I let her go. She trusted me with her life. I trusted her with mine. I removed the chain when we were indoors. But I still locked the door every time I left. And when we went down to the hot pools, I used a rope rather than a chain. She no longer seemed to mind. Part of me thought that, if I released her, she wouldn’t run away, but I couldn’t be certain.
When I wasn’t working, we spent all our time together. I had almost moved into the barn with her, only going into the house to change my clothes and shower, and occasionally I cooked in there and brought the meal out to Lindy. I thought about the practicalities of bringing her into the house but the risk was too great. I got visits occasionally from the boiler repair guy or a mechanic and from one persistent creditor.
Business was bad. The superette had been replaced by a large supermarket chain that got all their vegetables from a central supplier elsewhere. I’d had to relinquish the lease on the shop. The only retail I did was a weekend market. I had struck a deal with the local hospital to supply all their fruit and vegetable needs, but it wasn’t a big hospital and I’d had to bargain so hard to get the contract that it was hardly worth it. Lindy helped out. She knitted scarves and hats with wool I ordered for her from a catalogue she’d seen advertised in a magazine. She added tassels and triangular ends to the scarves and earflaps to the hats, like the ones I used to wear. I sold them alongside my produce at the stall. In the winter, I made more from her wares than mine.
I had insisted on contraception. Lindy desperately wanted a baby but that would mean so much trouble and I was barely making enough money to pay our bills. We couldn’t afford a kid. And besides, what would I do with it? Bring it up with me in the house like I’d been brought up or leave it in the barn with Lindy? There wouldn’t be room for three of us in there. What if she liked the kid more than she liked me? I insisted on condoms and she eventually conceded. I never forced her or pressured her. I didn’t trick her into taking the pill. I thought about it, but I had no way of getting it and I wanted our relationship to be open and honest.
When she told me she was pregnant four years later, early in 1996, I was taken aback. She had missed two periods. I hadn’t noticed. That was the only time I ever got angry with her. Had she pierced the condom with a pin? Had she saved the used condoms and somehow inseminated herself? She swore she hadn’t. ‘The condom must have burst. It happens. I’ve read about it.’
‘We can’t afford a kid, Lindy, you know that.’
‘I’ll cut back on everything. I can start knitting other stuff. Sweaters, waistcoats. I’ll do it twice as fast. I promise, we can make it work, Stevie, really we can.’ Her begging was futile. The baby was on its way and there was no way I could stop it without hurting her.
I agonized for the following months about how we could cope as I watched Lindy’s belly swell and watched her excitement grow with it. She knew she wasn’t going to a maternity hospital but she used me as her yardstick. ‘Your mother gave birth twice by herself. If she can do it, I can do it.’ I drove to Auckland to buy books on pregnancy and childbirth. We both read them cover to cover. I ordered medical textbooks on obstetrics.
My biggest fear was that Lindy would die giving birth. I did my best to pretend to be happy about it and I think Lindy did her best to believe me. She speculated endlessly, deciding one day that it was a girl and then another day she was sure it was a boy. She talked about the days when we could take the baby to the hot pools together and the nursery rhymes we would teach him or her. All the time, the pain in my chest got tighter and tighter.
It was late August 1996 when Lindy went into labour. Her waters broke conveniently while she was in the shower. I was staying around as much as possible because I was afraid of what might happen if she had to cope alone. When I walked into the barn and found her squatting on the bed on all fours, I knew exactly what was happening. I tried to block out the memory of my mother going into labour in that dingy room twenty-two years earlier. I was too young to understand what was happening then.
Now, I was prepared. I had a kitbag ready and waiting. I used the sterilizing fluid on everything; spread plastic sheeting on to the bed while Lindy huffed and puffed during a contraction. In between times, she turned over on her back but found that more painful. There seemed to be no position in which she could get comfortable. Eventually, she settled on her side until the next wave of pain broke and a film of sweat covered her whole body. ‘This is normal, right, Stevie? All this is normal?’ I tried to assure her that it was.
Seven hours later, as dusk was falling on that late winter evening, Lindy gave a final push and a scream that was unlike any I had heard before, and I had heard plenty. The baby’s head was forced out. I delved my hands inside her and managed to place them around its tiny shoulders and the rest of the baby plopped out on to the plastic sheet. A perfect girl. She was covered in a film of almost violet slime. I had been expecting this, or so I thought, but nothing can prepare you for the reality.
Lindy was almost delirious with pain and fear and joy, and reached for the child. ‘Is she breathing? Is she breathing?’
I couldn’t tell. The baby was squirming and shuddering in my arms. I wanted to wipe her clean, but Lindy reached greedily for her daughter. At the moment when I placed the little girl on Lindy’s chest, her tiny mouth opened and she squealed like a kitten. I was overcome with wonder and awe. I snipped the cord with the sterilized scissors. Lindy and I both cried. She shuddered with more contractions until, with a final push, the placenta was ejected. I made her some tea and began to clean up the bloody mess. I helped Lindy into the shower and together we washed our daughter in a large basin of water. I washed Lindy too, delicately. She was exhausted.
I waited until Lindy and the baby were asleep and then I lifted the tiny girl from her mother’s arms and crept out of the barn, locking it quietly behind me. It was past midnight. I took her into the house and wrapped her tightly in the blankets I’d bought from an op-shop in Auckland and placed her in the wooden crate I had thickly lined with old newspapers. I took the crate out to the car and placed it in the footwell of the passenger seat where nobody ever sat and drove to Auckland. She didn’t stir.
Part III
47
Sally
Everything was back to normal in the village. And I had a job that was perfect for me. At weekends, I would drive out to Farnley Manor and play the piano. Sometimes on weekdays too, if there was a wedding on. I also got unlimited tea and coffee and dainty sandwiches and pastries during my breaks. I couldn’t have asked for a better job.