E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
Holmes Crow Face, Doll Face
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-912905-83-6
Verlag: Honno Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-912905-83-6
Verlag: Honno Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Carly Holmes lives and writes on the banks of the river Teifi, west Wales. Her debut novel The Scrapbook was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award, and her Literary Strange short story collection Figurehead was published in limited edition hardback by Tartarus Press, and reprinted in paperback by Parthian Books. Her prize-winning short prose has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Ambit, The Ghastling, The Lonely Crowd, and has twice been selected for The Best Horror of the Year.
Autoren/Hrsg.
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Julian as a baby was a fluffy-haired, bright-eyed delight. He slept well, fed well and cried only when he needed something. Once those needs were met, his smile was back before his tears had dried. I really didn’t understand why people complained so much about this parenting business; it was a piece of cake.
My mother relished doling out prophecies of a life spent in perpetual worry, of never sleeping again and never knowing a moment’s peace, until eventually, as the icing on the cake, The Worst Happened – and the worst would happen, mark her words – and then that would be it: ruined lives all round and grief everlasting. Peter’s mother was tepid in her felicitations and vague with her advice so I knew she wasn’t planning to set out her doting-grandmother stall either. But we didn’t feel the lack of this support; caring for Julian was a joy and we vied to bathe him, dress him, cuddle him. I was so relieved to love him as much as I did, to not resent his arrival and the death knell it sounded for that other person I might have been.
When I found out I was pregnant with Elsa I carried the secret of her inside me for weeks, thrilling with the thought of this hidden jewel tucked in my womb. I knew she’d be a girl and I adored her already, day-dreaming frills and bonnets, pigtails and satin bows. Julian would protect and guide her in his role as the perfect older brother and she’d be the indulged apple of Peter’s eye. Who needed foreign adventures when your domestic life was this fulfilling?
Unlike her brother, who’d punched his due date right on the nose and left my body with relative ease – I say relative; the birth had stretched my endurance to its limits – Elsa was six days late and then another two days in the coming. Figuring myself to be an old hand at labour now and wanting as little disruption as possible for Julian, I’d decided to have a home birth. Peter was nervous but willing and so we left Julian with my mother as soon as I felt the first contractions, with breezy assurances that we’d be back for him within the day. We ended up racing to the hospital in an ambulance, me wailing louder than the sirens, after eighteen solid hours of the kind of pain that convinced me I was birthing an axe and not a baby.
When she was finally manipulated out of me by a brisk man wielding scalpel and forceps, one eye on the clock and tobacco breath, I looked down at the mewling chunk of human flesh that had suddenly appeared in my arms, its claret cheeks clashing horribly with its wispy pastel-pink hat, and I felt nothing but a bone-deep sadness. I yearned to reverse this awful mistake and be home with Julian, just the two of us, clapping along to nursery rhymes and chasing kisses along his shoulder blades. But, of course, this was just the traumatic hangover from a difficult birth and the last of the drug fumes filtering through my blood; I’d be fine in a day or two, once I’d had some decent rest and a good wash.
Grimacing apologies at the other mothers when Elsa’s shrieks drilled through the ward, nodding gratefully and handing her over when a nurse offered to take her back to the nursery to give me a break, I pretended a fatigue that I probably did feel but which was buried deep beneath a melancholy so vast I couldn’t fumble a way out of it. I lay awake when I should have been sleeping, consumed with fear that Julian would forget me, that he’d already forgotten me, that when I finally left the hospital he’d toddle past me in reception to some other woman and hand a pink balloon to her. I was bitterly jealous of Peter’s freedom to come and go whenever he pleased and furious with him when he brought flowers, furious with him when he didn’t. I wouldn’t let him bring Julian to visit but pestered him to tell me exactly what my boy was wearing today, which socks, describe them exactly, I don’t know which ones you mean. But he doesn’t even own grey socks with sheep on.
After a week I was allowed home and we all – the poor nurses especially – released a long and heartfelt sigh of relief. Things would be better once I was home. Elsa would start feeding properly and I’d be happier; we’d settle into a routine. I’d start loving her.
She did seem to relax more away from the clanging bustle of the hospital, her solid little body loosening and unfurling, her cries less devastated in pitch though just as frequent. I’d sit on the very edge of the bed through the hours that Peter was at work, watching over her in her crib while Julian bounced on the mattress or trundled his toys across the carpet. She twitched constantly in her sleep, her tiny arms jerking against the blankets I swaddled her with, as if she were trapped inside something; pushing against it to find a way out. When her eyes snapped open her expression was one of vast terror, her mind still tangled in the maze of her nightmare. I’d lean forward and hush her, watch her slacken with relief at the sound of my voice.
I wore thin cotton gloves when I lifted or held her, keeping my skin away from direct contact with hers. I’d read about the importance of touch for new-born babies, how vital skin-to-skin union was, and I knew that, as love transfers itself from mother to baby this way, so too must a lack of love. I had to protect Elsa from the indifference that clung to my flesh like mist. I was frightened it would encase her, soak into her pores and stiffen as lacquer until she was sealed forever inside this loveless space.
Just the thought of nursing her filled me with horror – my sour and tainted milk corroding her insides – and so I didn’t even try once I was home and away from the burden of others’ expectations. Peter fed her from the bottle in the mornings and evenings, urged on by me and enjoying the novelty. I encouraged him to bathe her every day after his milk round while I supervised from across the room with Julian snuggled onto my lap. A full week could go by without me touching her at all, except the occasional accidental brush of fingertips against her legs or stomach when I’d stripped off my gloves to change her. I wiped the stain from her immediately before it could do damage.
I hadn’t realised it would be so easy to live like this. I’d thought I’d have to do a lot more pretending, blow a lot more smoke into people’s eyes, but nobody seemed to notice. We see only what we want to see, I realised. And all anyone really wants to see is a mother caring capably for her child. Short of dangling Elsa by an ankle when I answered the door to the health visitor or leaving her alone on the kitchen floor while I took a bath, I wasn’t ever going to attract concerned looks or tentative questions; there would be no sharpening focus as I patted the air around Elsa time and again but never actually brought my hand down to rest on her body.
It was Julian who rescued me, in the end. Elsa was about eight months old and starting to grab at things, her eyes squint with the effort to keep the prize in sight. We were in the living room, the three of us, on a drizzly autumn afternoon. The television was tuned to Julian’s cartoons and he was sat on the floor in front of it, nose up to the screen, elbows on thighs and transfixed. Elsa was propped on a pile of cushions wedged between my feet. I turned the pages of a community newsletter and gazed out of the window at the dripping fuchsia, idling away the time until Peter would be home and I could start dinner, begin the soothing process of the evening routines and then the blessed comfort of bedtime and sleep.
‘Mummy?’ Julian said, startling me back to the room. I looked over. He was turned on his haunches, facing me and Elsa, who was creeping the last few inches on her belly to reach his side. I hadn’t noticed the shift in weight when she’d rolled from the cushions. We both watched as she flailed and struggled, flipping herself onwards, a baby turtle with Julian as her sea. He was smiling, pleased to be her destination, and he held out his hand when she was close enough to grasp at him so that she clung to his fingers with hers and jackknifed the last inch, landing up against his leg and hanging on.
He hauled her onto his lap and raised her arms above her head, pumping her fists up and down as if she’d achieved something truly victorious, laughing over at me. She flung her head back against his chest, bouncing it off his jumper, squealing with joy and kicking her feet. In that moment it was as if someone had taken a knife to my side, slid it through my ribs and punctured a hole in the poisoned sac that surrounded my heart. I could feel the deflation, feel the sadness and the months of numb fear shrilling out of my mouth in one long cry.
Julian gestured for me to take his sister – he’d lost interest now and wanted to go back to his cartoons – and I slid onto the carpet and crawled towards her on my hands and knees. ‘Clever baby Elsa,’ I said to her, gathering her into my arms and shuffling back to the sofa with her pressed against me. I peeled off the gloves and ran a finger the width of her face, ear to ear, bumping over her nose. ‘Aren’t you the cleverest baby girl there ever was.’ I held her through the rest of the afternoon, snuffling at the back of her neck and cupping her head in my palm while she slept.
I told...
