Read Online To Have and to Hold by Deborah Moggach - Free Book Online Page A

we’ve talked! She’s offered to. She’ll have it, and breastfeed it –’
    â€˜That’s enough!’
    â€˜But –’
    â€˜Let’s not hear the sordid details.’
    â€˜Don’t get angry. I’m just . . .’ She looked at his reddened face.
    â€˜You two, sometimes . . .’ He paused. ‘What’ve you girls been up to?’
    â€˜Don’t call us girls.’
    â€˜What the hell’s she playing at?’
    â€˜I’ll explain –’
    â€˜Explain tomorrow.’
    â€˜But –’
    â€˜Not now. Please.’ He put his arms around her. His voice softened. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to shout, but I just don’t like to see you upset. It’s you I’m worried about, darling.’
    He stroked her arm, pushing up the sleeve of her nightie. She flinched, but lay still. He went on stroking; he shook his head,smiling faintly. She wished he would stop looking at her like that. But she must not move.
    â€˜You’ve been through so much,’ he said. ‘Let’s forget your sister for a bit, put it all out of our minds.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘You’re the one I love, remember.’
    She willed herself to put her arms around him. For the first time in their marriage, as his hand slid down her breast, she felt like a whore.
    She leaned over him and put out the light.
    Babies are crawling over each other, piles of babies. They are whimpering softly. Chubby, bendy limbs and bright eyes. The room is as high and blue as the sky. Won’t they get chilly? Viv searches through the babies, panic-stricken. They are naked and they all look alike. On each arm – oh how soft those arms are – on each there is a tattoo, and she must learn how to read them, because one baby is hers. But when she looks closely, the tattoos are just squiggles, meaningless. She knows that somewhere she must find her own name. That baby will be hers, but time is running short and she must get it out of here. She must get it home.
    She woke abruptly. She was damp with sweat. The house was silent and she knew her girls were gone. She pushed Ollie but he stayed asleep. She shook his shoulder.
    â€˜Ollie! Where are the girls?’
    He turned over. ‘At Julie’s, remember?’ He sat up and put on the light. ‘Got to get them before breakfast.’
    They looked at the clock. It was half past four. He turned off the light and lay back.
    A moment later she thought he had gone back to sleep. But she was wrong; the duvet dragged as he turned over, away from her. He spoke with his back to her, his voice surprisingly clear.
    â€˜Viv.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Don’t you see?’
    The duvet shifted as he turned his head and then moved round again to face her. His knee knocked against hers.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said. It was too dark to see him clearly; as the girls were away they had turned off the landing light.
    â€˜One fact, in all this, seems to have escaped your notice,’ he said.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜You know perfectly well that . . .’ He stopped, sighed, and spoke again. ‘That once you had a baby,
if
you had one . . .’
    A silence. ‘What?’ she said.
    â€˜You’d never bear to give it up.’
    There was another silence.
    â€˜You know that,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

_____
Six
_____
    ALL OVER LONDON people were going to work. It was a damp, mild winter morning. Girls gazed out of the windows of buses; they rubbed their hands on the misted glass. Cars revved up in traffic jams; from them came the mixed chatter of their radios. The city’s heart beat, quickening. It knew nothing of Ollie’s head, which ached from the previous night’s cheap wine and disorientating talk. He was swallowed up as he descended into the Underground. The man standing on the escalator in front of him knew nothing; how surprising that it was all the same.