Unbecoming Read Online Free PDF Page B

knows she’s desperate. She sees herself as Pat sees her, desperate and so afraid and she doesn’t care. See me like this. This is me. Did you know this was me? All these years you envied me, big sister, but I reckon you don’t envy me now! The peak arrives more quickly, takes her more completely than before.
    â€˜Breathe,’ Pat says. ‘I read it somewhere. Like blowing smoke.’
    And Mary blows, blows until she’s giddy …
    And then something amazing. There’s suddenly distance and over there, far away, she sees herself as a child sitting in the arms of the cherry tree. It crosses Mary’s mind that perhaps she’s dying, which seems a shame, but at least there’s no pain here for an instant. Here’s the day the sun shone ladders down the side of the house and she spied Norman, the boy next door, cleaning his bike. She wanted to secretly throw something at him, but the cherries weren’t grown yet, and apart from branches and leaves there wasn’t anything. Here was the day she smeared her lips crimson and smacked them together, enjoying the strange taste of stolen lipstick as she clambered swiftly down the tree, crossed the grass, slid silently over the wall and tapped Norman on his shoulder. ‘You want a kiss?’
    And now this – oh, again, oh, not again! Will this last for ever? She wants to push. She’s losing it, completely. This will never endand she hears herself screaming. She really can’t stand any more. All moments of peace are ended, all memories have gone, and she’s back in her bedroom with these walls and her sister flapping about like a lunatic and this unavoidable need to push. It’s like puking. Urgent and ridiculous.
    How can she still be alive and feel this much agony? She actually feels the baby as, ‘Oww!’ as its head presses against her, opening her, stretching her so wide it burns. It has to stop, she has to make it stop. It’s like being eaten by fire. She scrabbles with her hand, reaches down to put an end to this, to do something, anything that will make it go away. But her fingers meet the baby’s head – and it’s so entirely shocking to touch her unborn child, that the room goes still. She is touching her daughter. She is the first person in the world to touch her. For the rest of Caroline’s life, that will always be true. The baby’s head is convoluted like a soft mountain range. Her hair is wet fluff, the curve of her skull so tender as she, as Mary, pushes her out and there’s a face between her legs. For an instant, for a completely odd and confusing second, it’s her being born, she thinks, and she lies blinking between her own mother’s legs with the pressure of the world across her shoulders and she knows above all things that this child must be loved. If I can give you nothing else, I promise you that . Pat’s fumbling with hot water and towels and saying, ‘Pant, don’t push!’ when there’s nothing Mary can do to avoid it, nothing, no panting in the world is stopping this.
    It takes three pushes (only three! Pat will recount later, as if even in the process of giving birth to an illegitimate child, Mary is blessed with good fortune) and the baby lies on the bed slippery as a mackerel and Mary is a mother.
    She’s done it. She’s survived, and so has the baby and so has Pat and all three of them are crying.
    â€˜It’s relief,’ Pat says. But then she looks at her watch, so maybe it’s fear, because their father’s at the pub and he’ll be home soon and how the heck are they going to explain away a baby?

Six
    ‘“Slut” was a word I was familiar with,’ Mary told the girl who came running up. ‘But from my father’s lips it made me feel terribly exposed. Can you imagine?’
    ‘I’d say Houdini was a more appropriate term,’ the girl said, grabbing her arm and steering her back across the street.