For Alice by Rachel Crowther

Read a runner-up entry in our 2007 short story competition

Rachel, 42, is a public health doctor. She lives with her husband Richard and their five children.

For Alice
She couldn't be there, that was all. The shop would have to find someone else to help with the event. She prepared her speech, chose her moment. They were surprised – partly by her agitation – and somewhat irritated; she had expected that. They were also curious, which she would have expected but had not.

“Has something come up?” asked Margaret.
Alice was no good at lying, and she hadn't prepared an explanation.
“I'd rather not say,” she said. “ If that's all right.”

But that just made them more curious. It became the theme for the afternoon, inventing reasons why Alice couldn't come to the book signing. They weren't unkind, her colleagues; it was just a bit of fun on a slow Wednesday. They assumed Alice's discomfiture was due to some small social embarrassment, forgetting a promise to be elsewhere. The scenarios they put forward were really the last things they suspected.

“It's a hot date,” said Phyllida. “She's cheating on that nice new husband of hers.”

That was a whole other subject to tease Alice about. They hadn't met Jim, and Alice rarely talked about him – at least not in the way they did, recounting things their husbands had done, quoting their opinions. All they knew was what Alice revealed in answer to direct questions, and you could only ask so many questions, especially to someone like Alice. Jim was tall, solidly built, greying, and balding. That much they had discovered. He had taken Alice to the Amalfi coast for their honeymoon, to a hotel he had read about with hundreds of steps down to the sea.

If Alice had wanted to talk about Jim she could have told them how they had met, or what he did for a living, or what he'd done before he met her. Each of those topics would have kept Margaret and Phyllida happy for weeks. Some of Alice's life history would have interested them, too, but somehow they weren't as curious about that. Anyone looking at Alice imagined they knew everything about her from first glance.

She explained to Jim that she had known the author once. That was enough for him. Jim had secrets too: it was one of the things they shared. He knew how to value what she told him and not to want more. They had an unspoken agreement. Facts were safe; facts could be related as if they belonged to someone else. What the facts meant, their emotional details, was less safe. They were careful not to overburden each other, or their fragile conveyance of a marriage, with such risky cargo. This was how Alice thought of it. Some people's marriages grew steadily in capacity, like their cars, until they could hold a life's worth of baggage. Theirs was a rickety thing, like an old Mini, but it got them from A to B. it made all the difference to them, having it.

She and Jim had been at primary school together, years ago. She hardly remembered him, a rough boy with short hair who was often in trouble. But there was one memory: meeting him outside the Headmaster's office, she a class monitor carrying the registers, anxious not to be taken for another miscreant. He'd smiled at her, a kind, uncomplicated smile. The smile had stuck in her mind because she hadn't expected it, in the circumstances. And Jim was a kind man.

How they met again was still strange to her. It was her nephew, really. Matthew. He was always on the computer, and when he was there at Christmas Alice found it restful to watch him battling foreign armies or exchanging messages in incomprehensible chat-room language. More restful than watching her brother-in-law getting drunk and expansive, and her sister shrinking into the sofa.

One evening he asked, “Where were you at school then, Auntie Alice.”
“Why?”
“We could go on Friends Reunited, see if there's anyone you know.”

The only person from her year at St Luke's who had registered on the site was Jim, and before Alice could protest – despite her protests – Matthew had sent him an email. He emailed back the same evening.

Jim knew about the surrogacy. It was one of the things she couldn't not tell him: he asked whether she had any children, and she told him.

It was nearly ten years ago now. At the time it seemed an act of kindness which wouldn't cost her much and which could change someone else's life. Alice had no particular use for her womb, and it seemed a shame for it to go to waste when other women had such difficulty. It was harder than she had expected, but not much. The pregnancy was straightforward, and with no husband to worry about she could put her feet up in the evenings. She felt a bit funny afterwards, not seeing the baby for more than a few minutes, but she took a nice holiday and found a new job – the one in the bookshop where she still worked – and it felt all right.

But as the year passed it upset her more, the absense of the child she had given birth to. There was an emptiness inside her, as if she had given away a part of herself which it turned out she needed. The child wasn't related to her, of course – she was an IVF baby, an embryo made by her parents. But Alice had read (she went through a stage of reading everything she could on the subject) that something of her would be in the little girl even so. She was hazy about the details, but there were some cells, some DNA, which crossed the placenta. She liked to think of those cells, living on in the child who had lived inside her for nine months.

The thing Jim couldn't not tell her was that he had been in prison. He had come out OK in the end, the rough boy with short hair and a nice smile, but it had taken a while, a few wrong turnings. That was his baggage, the other piece of luggage they could manage all right between them. All Alice knew was that it had been some kind of fraud, nothing violent. When he answered her message on Friends Reunited he was doing a computer course his probation officer had set up. Jim said if they knew how far that course had got him they'd be pleased. The first thing it got him was Alice, and the second was a business which was more successful than he could believe.

Jim was good at computers. Not mending them or programming them, just understanding what they could do, like helping him buy and sell things at a tidy profit. A niche market was what you needed, and he'd found his. He hadn't told Alice how much money he was making. It seemed a lot to spring on her, especially since every part of the business was in her name, his secret gift to her. And while it was all just figures on the screen it didn't seem real, more like a kind of computer game (“High score three thousand pounds!”). If he told Alice things might have to change; they might think about buying a bigger house, for example. He liked the house: it was just like the one he grew up in.

Alice liked the house too. She liked having something so solid to show for her marriage: her own front door, the tiny front garden which Jim had cleared of rubble and laid out in strips of path, grass, flowerbed. She liked sharing her life, and her bed, too. It gave her pleasure to accommodate her habits and the pattern of her life to Jim's needs and customs. The new order showed up the deadening regularity of her previous life, the spinsterly routines which had never been rooted in any sense of conviction. She was filled with relief because she had someone else, now, to make decisions about the things she didn't care about.

At night she moulded herself around Jim's sleeping form. The outline of his body gave shape to her own, just as the baby inside her had done for a while. She liked the fact that he was a light sleeper; she liked keeping still and quiet so as not to wake him. She lay against his back and talked to him silently, saying things which remained unspoken in the daytime. Sometimes she wasn't sure what she had really told him – whether his answers were those she had supplied while he slept – and occasionally his matter-of-fact response at night gave her the courage to repeat things during the day.

Jim wasn't an imaginative man, but he was not insensitive and he wanted Alice to be happy. In the days after she backed out of the book-signing event at work he noticed that she was quieter, less attentive. It occurred to him that it might be a strain for her, working full-time and running the house. Women sometimes went through difficult phases at her age. He was pleased when a solution presented itself. On the website where he had booked the honeymoon he found a last-minute deal at a seaside hotel in Cornwall. Alice had arranged to take a few days holiday around the time of the book signing, and this kind of surprise he didn't mind springing on her.
“I've booked us a break,” he said, that evening. “In Cornwall, right on the beach. No steps, even.”
“When for?” she asked, then: “How lovely, Jim.”
They hadn't been married long enough for her to have much experience of him doing things for her. For a moment she thought she might cry, remembering the reliable solidity of his sleeping form and the way he filled up her life, and now this on top. They didn't have much experience of tender moments together either. She felt a little self-conscious, but there was something certain and definite about Jim that was enough for both of them.

The weather was blowy while they were away, a warm wind that carried the sea air into their bedroom. Jim wasn't keen on seafood, but they did a nice steak in the restaurant and Alice feasted on mussels and skate and even oysters, one night. They walked along the beach and drove along the coast – tortuous drives, following the clefts and protubences of the shoreline. One day they found themselves in a village a mile or two inland with a pretty church and a flower-decked pub. There was a public park, too, surprisingly big and well tended, and Jim suggested they bought fish and chips for an open-air lunch.

It was the kind of park people liked to donate benches to, and they read the inscriptions as they wandered along. Most her plain enough – “In memory of Zelda, who loved this park” – but few were more fancy, quoting bits of poetry. The one that halted them both: “For Alice, from her children.”

Jim was surprised how upset Alice was about the bench. He didn't blame her, of course; it supported his theory about the time of life, realising she wasn't going to have children now. She lay down on her bed for most of the afternoon, which was not like her, but later on they had tea together in the conservatory overlooking the sea – neither of them having eaten much of the fish and chips, the way things turned out.
When the waiter had brought the tray, with an inviting spread of cakes and sandwiches, she told him quite calmly about the book signing and how the author who was doing it was the woman she had had the baby for. The book wasn't written under the name Alice had known her by, but Alice had recognised her from the photograph on the cover, had been quite certain who she was. That was why she hadn't wanted to be there, and Jim could understand that, though he wasn't sure whether Alice was afraid of being recognised, or worried how she would react.

On the evening of the book signing Alice drank a couple more glasses of wine than usual and went to bed early. Jim hoped that would be the end of the matter, now it was all out in the open.

Alice had never expected any contact with the child. She had only met the couple once; she hadn't asked for news of the baby, or even thought she'd want it. That hadn't been part of the deal. She had agreed to make her and hand her over, like a very beautiful doll, lovingly created but always intended to be given away. She knew the law made provision for children to look for their natural parents, but she wasn't even the biological mother – an antenatal foster mother, was how one of the volunteer staff at the agency had out it – so there was no reason for this child to be curious about the person who had given birth to her.

Nonetheless, since she had got married Alice had started to think about the child more often. Not that she had a proper home to show her, a husband, she had sometimes fantasised about a telephone call, a knock on the door. Being confronted with the reality of the little girl's existence had destroyed that fantasy. How could this mother – a successful woman, an author – allow her child to visit Alice and Jim, a bookshop assistant and an ex-con living in a former council house? How could Alice offer her anything? How could she ever have imagined having anything to give?

Despite the incident in the park, the holiday did Alice good. Being looked after for a few days, seeing the sae; even getting away from Margaret and Phyllida was a relief. She realised how tired she had got. It must have been more of an adjustment that she thought, looking after Jim as well as herself. She started going to bed earlier, leaving Jim to go back to the computer. Jim made no complaint: he mentioned his theory that the change of life was behind it, and although it was earlier than she had expected Alice went along with his view. And instead of the sallowness she suspected, Jim saw roses in her cheeks, which he attributed to the sea air, to the holiday he had given her.

The truth was slow to emerge. Since it was the last thing Alice expected, she wasn't looking for the signs, and misread those she noticed. It wasn't until she went to the doctor about something else that she thought to put her symptoms together. Then the doctor approached it obliquely, asking whether she was using contraception, when her last period had been. To Alice it seemed an extraordinary possibility, but he was perfectly matter-of-fact. He sent her to the chemist to buy a testing kit over the counter.

Alice said nothing to Jim until she had three little strips of paper tucked away in a drawer, one each from three consecutive days, each with a telltale pink line across the middle.

When she told him, Jim sat for a moment in silence; smiling slightly, but grave. This was as it should be: it was a big thing for them, something they hadn't bargained for. Then he got up and put his arms around her, and they were silent together, Alice leaning on his chest and feeling the same as she had when he told her about the holiday.

“There's lots of tests and things to go through,” she said, tentative because she didn't want to spoil the moment, but not wanting them to jump ahead too far, to count any chickens. “With my age, you know. It's more risky than when you're young.”

He tightened his grip on her, then released her and stood back a little so she could see him properly. “You're not to worry about tests or anything,” he said. “I've got some news for you too, and it means we don't have to worry about anything any more, money wise: you can have the best doctors, everything you need.”

He paused, considering the best way to explain things to her, how much to say now in the heat of the moment. That was when they heard the knock, followed by a short ring on the doorbell. Jim looked at Alice quizzically, even though part of him knew straight away what the knock was about.

“You expecting anybody?” He asked lightly.
Alice couldn't imagine what the Police could want. It was her they asked for, and there was something in their voices that told her it wasn't the kind of bad news she first thought of.

“Mrs Alice Hall?” said the older one.

Before Alice could reply, Jim leapt in. “It's all right, officer,” he said. “It's not my wife you want, it's me. I'm the one with form. Please, leave my wife alone. I've used her name, but she knows nothing about it. She's pregnant, just pregnant, and nothing must upset her.”

In the weeks that followed, Alice felt cocooned, protected from the worst of what was going on. It had been too much to expect, the three of them as a happy family, Jim going straight. She should have thought about the risks, the temptations of the Internet he had to contend with. But even that short moment when such a happy ending seemed possible was precious – and he had given her something else, even as everything crumbled. In the time it took for the Police to agree to interview him, not her, she had understood what she meant to him, and that he had heard all the words she had whispered to him in the dark. They were not just a middle-aged couple getting by with a makeshift marriage late in life: theirs was a love story.


Read the other finalists' entries in our 2007 short story competition

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