Seed

Maria dreamed of warm sweet things. She dreamed of desserts her mother once baked, when she was small and they were happy. And they were so happy, the three of them, together, before her mother destroyed their world.

She dreamed too of those rare visits with her father, years later in her teens. She squealed with happiness when she saw him at the school gates. It was icy outside, and his huge warm car smelled of leather and aftershave. He whisked her away to bright neon-lit cafés, where she dug into impossibly tall glasses of ice cream; layers of pink and brown and yellow, crowned with a blood-red cherry. She dreamed of greedily sinking into those creamy depths, an ice mermaid armed with a long silver teaspoon.

Eyes closed, she hugged her belly, feeling the sharp kick within her. It was dark, and Jerry's soft snoring next to her meant it was still long before dawn. She sat up and slipped her feet into her slippers.

She wasn't quite sure why they had placed the cradle in their bedroom. It had been four and a half years now since they'd moved here from the city, with idyllic dreams of the children they would have.

He would work in his job in the city: the husband, the father, the provider. She would clean and bake and sew, and keep the perfect home. She would watch their children play outside while having members of the local Women's Institute around for tea. The children would run in laughing, shouting, and the women would smile indulgently over their tea-cups while the boys trailed mud across the flagstone floors. It would be perfect.

Her mother, of course, thought she was insane.

"The years I worked, to put you through that bloody school, with not a penny from your damn father. I gave you the best, the best I always wanted but had to fight for! And believe me, I had to fight for everything! For god's sake Maria, do you want nothing from this world? Look at you, you're young and intelligent and beautiful, you could have anything you wanted.

“How could you betray me like this? Betray us all! Don't you realise its bloody women like you I've fought against all my life!" Her face was blood-red with rage, fuelled by wine from a half empty bottle.

On a rational level Maria understood why her mother felt that way. But didn't she realise, the whole point of the modern world was that you could make a choice? University wasn't so important really. What did it have to teach her when all she had yearned for, since nursing dolls in their North London flat, was a baby of her own!

She remembered sitting alone with the sound of traffic outside, dreaming that the cold plastic body she cradled was real; a soft warm thing, flesh of her flesh, hers to love and cherish. It was a hole in her soul that had grown with every passing year since her father left. And now her whole being sang for a child. With her broad hips, her round breasts, she was a mother in every way. Except the one most important thing.

Jerry was perfect, too, and of course she did love him. But she had been very careful in her selection. He played rugby, or at least he had until they had bought the house. Now he commuted to the city every day and was too tired at the weekends. But he was strong, kind and healthy.

She looked now at his broad shoulders as he slept, covers tucked under his arm. Any moment, little Michael (named after her father, and that would really annoy Mum) could come running in, scared from a bad dream, or awake with a toddler's energy. He would bound onto the bed, and Jerry would wake, giving that bear-like growl he always made when awoken unexpectedly. The growl would turn into a bull roar, and he would hurl little Michael up giggling onto those broad shoulders, and carry him downstairs for an early breakfast. Or maybe it was Christmas and... but she shook her head, shrugging off the fantasies. They would become real, soon enough.

The cradle had sat empty in the room for all these years. Four and a half, long, empty years. For the first sixth months they had tried, lovingly, laughingly, passionately. Then she had become more methodical. She read books. She wrote up schedules. She checked herself scrupulously with thermometers.

They tried different positions. She tried yoga, and when they had finished lovemaking she rocked her hips backwards, legs raised, to let his seed run deep into her. She tried massage. She tried teas, homeopathic concoctions, and strange smelling, dried-up roots that came wrapped in delicate patterned paper, from an exclusive Chinese herbalist in the West End.

A year passed. "Nothing to worry about," said her doctor. Said the nurse. Said the local midwife. Said Jerry's mother, his sister, his aunts, his great-aunts. Her mother had said nothing. Maria had not wanted to discuss it with her. She knew her mother's lips would curl into a momentary snarl of distaste that she would cover well with a smile.

Eighteen months. The next hurdle had been staring her in the face for some time, but she had waited, patiently. She followed her plan. Eighteen months since their marriage, to the day, and she told Jerry what he needed to do. Over dinner, by candlelight. He had taken it well; there was none of the shouting, the shame-faced hurt pride, the bruise to his masculinity that she might have expected from any other man. She had chosen him well. He had agreed quietly, and had made an appointment with the hospital the next day.

He passed the test. Millions of healthy wriggling sperm, squirming like Olympians, eager to die a blissful death, thrusting their rutting heads into the sun-like orb of her ovum. The doctor had smiled happily, as if it was good news. Good news! She said nothing. In fact, she said nothing for a long time, eyes staring, shoulders rigid, while Jerry held her and touched her and told her everything would be alright. She was sure there could be nothing wrong with her. Her body was perfect. Could it all be betrayed by something rotten deep inside?

She felt herself crumbling inside, like those empty shells of buildings: immaculate facades with nothing but wreckage within. She did nothing melodramatic. But after a week she wiped her eyes, red-rimmed with tears, and quietly returned to the hospital, alone. The cold metal and bright lights made her nauseous. She felt like a useless thing, a corpse, dead and dissected, doctors probing her insides to see what had made her die.

But the doctor had donned his customary smile, yet again. "Nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all" he had said, as if that were good news. Good news!

And yet it had felt like good news. She bitterly remembered those few days, those few, short days when she had been relieved, until the obvious, oh so obvious question whispered in her mind. Why? If there is nothing wrong with him, nothing wrong with me, then why?

And all this time, the cradle had sat there, mere feet from their marriage bed, accusingly. Reminding her every morning, every night, every time she opened her eyes from sleep, of their failure. Of her failure.

She stood by the window. Tonight was one of those rare summer nights when it felt like the tropics. There was a lazy warm heat in the air. It was deep dark and silent outside, no breeze, no lights, no rumble of cars, no moonlight, not even the distant pinpoint of a lit window in a neighbouring house. She felt primeval and wild, far from civilisation.

At the dark window, she pulled apart her gown and ran her fingers across her golden belly; taught and round, growing wider and tighter every day like a melon. She touched her tender breasts, smiled, and stared knowingly at the withered old tree at the far end of the garden.

Two years had passed. Twenty-four months. Seven hundred and thirty days since she had given herself on her bridal bed to the man who would father her child. She was a spring bride, of course; a sumptuous confection in white. She had been ecstatic, giddy, higher than any drug on the expectation of fulfilling her destiny. She had waited her whole life, not out of some prudish sense of morality, but because she wanted so desperately to feel that moment, for it to be right. So she had given herself with an abandon that stunned strong, gentle, caring Jerry, teasing him and tempting him into excesses he hadn't known he was capable of. They were wild that night, like Adam and Eve, guiltless, guileless, innocent. Afterwards, while he slept, she had even thought she felt the spark of life within her. She was wrong, but she didn't care. They had all the time in the world.

After all the tests, they had tried again, regularly, timed by the moon and the tide of her own body. It became a ritual, and then, a chore. He worked hard, and often would not come home until late. She lay awake waiting for him to touch her, but he was too tired, he said, and smiled weakly before kissing her cheek. Eventually even the kisses grew scarce.

Jerry took to spending more time with his family. His family. Even that word had caused bitter rows, as if she were not family enough for him. She had screamed and raged, clawing him with her nails, smashing the perfect china. And she wasn't enough, she knew. A family meant mother, father and children. What kind of a family was she, who had little enough experience of a decent family herself. How could she alone be family to someone else?

It was Jerry's sister who had suggested in vitro fertilisation. Maria knew what it meant: sperm mixed with her egg in a tube, fertilised then inserted into her body. It was painful to admit her own beautiful body had betrayed her, but after those twenty-four long months of failure it seemed a sensible hope. She had listened to the doctors almost in a dream, hearing facts and figures, failure rates, percentages, waiting times. Cost. Jerry eyes darkened at writing those cheques, but what did money matter. It meant nothing, if she could conceive.

She counted the days on her calendar, as the months of preparation passed. Her plan was back on track. It was now July. Two years, four months. Ninth months later would be April, just a month after their third anniversary!

A spring birth would be perfect. Easter-time. Her own perfect egg would hatch, and she would at last hold the perfect child in her arms. He would be her new religion, her all, her world. How marvellous the modern world, how much better that she could actually plan when and where and how her children would come! Perhaps that was her true destiny, not to rely on vulgar chance like those other women in the world, breeding by accident like animals. Planned, perfect, flawless, that was surely her birthright.

She was proud and fearless that day, unafraid this time of the cold metal and the bright lights as her eggs were drawn from her body. Perfect eggs. She had seen them in the microscope, pale and translucent like planets in a distant realm, empty worlds waiting to be peopled with life. Tranquil and flawless, ripe gardens awaiting the gift of seed.

She didn't remember much after that, perhaps for a few days or more. Certainly she had been sedated, and even her mother had come. She remembered vague glimpses of her mother's face, looking sad and fearful. She looked old, with lines across her face, muffled protectively in a scarf and coat even though it was summer outside.

There was a term for what was wrong, the doctors had tried to explain, though she screamed and howled in disbelief. Now she saw it this way: her eggs were poison. Pale, translucent, deceptive sacs of bile, dead worlds that could never host life. Sperm that swam near would weaken and flop, lifeless, or swim on in revulsion. She knew she had screamed and thrashed and raged. She had lashed out with nails and teeth, with anything that came to hand, hurling fragile glass and sharp metal. Now she replayed those memories, detached, as if they had happened to someone else.

She had almost lost her mind. How could she live with this cruel trick the world had played on her! Was her mother happy now? She knew she had screamed bitter, spiteful things to everyone around; to her mother, to Jerry, to Jerry's perfect family.

She shuddered, pushing back memories of that time, such as they were. It was a warm night, but she trembled. She was grateful to the doctors at least for giving her an excuse. Mental exhaustion, nervous collapse, she now knew these were just helpful euphemisms to cover up times when you can't control the rage. Nobody blamed her. Everyone was very kind and gentle, supportive, and forgave her for the vicious words she had screamed until her throat was raw, until the needle of cold fluid had finally made her numb. She was glad the doctors had given her an excuse. She had meant every word, and she knew it. She wondered if they all knew it too.

The drugs made her numb, which was a mercy at the start but she stopped taking them. Jerry was kind, and even took time off work to be with her, but she soon put a stop to that. Her mother even came to stay for a short time, but Maria let her go, and despite protestations she knew her mother was glad to leave.

She was barren. That old biblical word, heavy with portent and solemnity, dusty and smelling of ancient times. Barren. Dried up, useless, purposeless.

She took to tending the garden. Maria had already spent years preparing the house, and everything was immaculate. People laughed when they visited, it was so like a home furnishings magazine, like a hotel: clean, fresh, and tasteful, as if always awaiting guests. They had four bedrooms. Three rooms ready for children who never came, and one the scene of a useless ritual, rarely enacted these days. A pointless, empty ritual, performed like those tribesman they had once seen on holiday, going through their hollow dance for the tourist cameras, though they drank Coke and wore t-shirts, and no longer believed in the spirits of their ancestors.

Only the garden was left, though it had always been neat enough. There were gardenias and fuschias, and Jerry cut the lawn every Sunday astride a noisy machine left behind by the previous owners. The far end, between the lawn and the fields, was almost wild. Maria had loved it that way. It was thick and green, rich with the scent of ferns and nettles, which Jerry cursed as their seeds got into his lawn. In summer it was pungent with bushes of hawthorn and elder, and far behind lurked a few old, broken trees, swallowed up in the darkness of green.

It was a perfect den for climbing and hiding, for running and playing games. It was a little corner for adventure, like in those tales of rural adventures Maria had read as a lonely child in the flat above a shop on a North London street.

But the wilderness was useless now, just a wild thicket of weeds and greenery whose tendrils worked their way into Jerry's lawn. When spring came (three years, three years), she bought a scythe, and Jerry had become very concerned. Tentatively he had said "But, Maria, wouldn't a strimmer be better? Or maybe we can get someone in, to do the hard work cutting back, you really don't want to be doing all that work by yourself." Maria was angry but held her breath. She breathed, and persuaded him that she was fine. It was good for her to have something to do.

She got up early in the morning, dressed in old trousers and one of Jerrys old rugby shirts (she felt a pain for their early days but ignored it) and began her work. She enjoyed it. It was strangely satisfying, hacking at the ancient growth of ferns and weeds, watching creeping things scuttle away from the sudden flood of light into their dark green world. She even planned what she would do with the garden. It was a much bigger area than she had thought. Maybe she could make it into a rock garden, or a pond, or a rose garden. She could get manure from the local farm and grow vegetables, make her own jam and preserves, invite people over for dinners with everything made from scratch from her own garden. She would beam over those little parties she would host, and forget everything about the past.

But when she saw the apple tree, all her plans, her hopes and dreams, faded like spectres in the rising sun.

It was thin, dry and withered, its pale bark choked with dead brown ivy. Most of its arms had broken, the stumps scabbed over with moss. It leaned alarmingly, like an old man staggering on his last legs. Cracked roots stuck out of the earth like dying worms; blind, thirsty and desperate for nourishment. The slimy black soil crawled with hatching flies, and the air was filled with an earthy stench of decay. But her shocked sense of disgust was nothing until she looked up.

For above the flies and torn limbs, above the scabrous trunk, grey-brown and throttled by vines, was a single thin green stem. It was pale and starved of light, with three yellow leaves hanging limply from its stem. The tree was monstrous, rotten, broken, vile and eaten from within. It stank of death, and yet it was alive.

You are like me, said the tree. Rotten, corrupt, withered inside and useless. Yet we cling on to life.

Her eyes stared wide and she inhaled a gasp of horror. The stench of putrefaction caught like fingers in her throat, and she backed away in terror and disgust. She stared as the flies rose above the oozing roots, and was held in a monstrous paralysis of dread.

She ran. She fought through the mess of broken vegetation in panic, blood running from her slashed hands. She stumbled and her foot caught a hacked-off stump, and she was hurled into a hollow of slime. Nettles stung her flesh and burned, and the terrible tree glowered above her as she scrambled across the wet lawn to the house, slamming the door behind her.

Jerry had not understood. She had frightened him on the phone and he had broken off an important meeting in the city, an important client who had travelled a long way. His first act was to retrieve the scythe from the garden, and lock it safely in the boot of his car. It was the first time he had ever shouted at her. She cowered on the kitchen floor, stinking and caked with filth, her eyes wild and staring. She could hardly speak her lips trembled so, and his heart broke. He knelt down and held her, still in his business suit.

She begged him not to call the doctor. She had just frightened herself, she was tired, it was nothing. She would have a bath and cook dinner, she would be fine. She fought to control the hysterical desperation in her voice, to convince him. She kissed him, foul thing though she was; foul, reeking, rotten, broken inside, dried up and uselessly clinging onto life. He showered her, and for the first time in months, they made love, and it was almost like the old times.

Like the first time, in spring, three years before.

He didn't want to leave for work the next morning, but she persuaded him to go. It was a fresh, clear cool morning, and for the first in a long time she kissed him goodbye.

I know who you are, she said to the tree, once the car had gone.

Back at the window now, touching her ripe belly, she could just see the tree in the darkness. She hadn't told Jerry yet, in fact she hadn't told anyone. It was an intoxicating secret. For the first few months she had told herself she was wrong, that it was impossible, even though she knew the truth. If she had believed and found out she was wrong, it would have snapped that last precious cord she clung to, the slim lifeline of hope that prevented her from falling forever into the abyss. She had told herself again and again not to believe, that it was impossible, despite the nausea and the swelling and the secret joy inside her.

She had always been curvaceous, so for all these months it had been easily concealed. She even let others believe she was just putting on weight.

"She's depressed" whispered Jerry's sister, on the rare times she visited the house, when she thought Maria was out of earshot. "She's obviously comfort eating. Its not healthy. You have to do something Jerry, get her back to the doctor. She needs to go back on medication!"

Maria refused. She smiled a secret smile, and tried to act as if everything was normal. She became good at pacifying Jerry, fooling him. It had been a delightful game, the last nine months, them all thinking she was still dried up, dead and useless. But soon, oh so soon, she would show them. Because, after three years, she had devised a plan.

She had gone back to working on the garden. It was slower this time, limited to using a small fork and a blunt spade, but as the days went buy she cleared a space around the tree. She bought heavy gloves and hacked back the hawthorn and elder to their base. As the spring progressed she dug out the stumps, and piled up the refuse into a great bonfire. She even warned Jerry a few days before that she was going to do it. He nervously agreed, helping her stack the wood and branches, making sure the fire was far enough from the house. "Why don't I get someone in to help you get rid of that ugly old tree?" Jerry said mildly. "Oh there's no need", she replied.

"But it’s dead, look at those branches. And aren't there mushrooms growing on it? That's a sure sign of a dead tree. You're never gonna get any apples off of that!" he joked. She didn't laugh, and her face remained impassive. "No Jerry, it's still alive, I promise you."

And indeed it was. As the weeks went by she cleared the ground, so the tree was standing alone, in earth freshly dug with manure. She bought poles to secure the leaning trunk, and tore down the dead ivy. She laid new turf around the whole cleared ground, with neat borders that she planted with sweet-smelling herbs and flowers.

You think cleaning me up, surrounding me with soft grass and pretty flowers is enough? I am rotten inside. All the sweet-smelling herbs in the world will not cover up the stench of death.

Jerry was unconvinced by her efforts. "Look at that monstrosity, one good wind and down it'll come, it was just the weeds holding it up!" He laughed, and she managed a weak smile, if only to humour him. "You never know," she said, "it might just surprise you. You know I never like to give up." She kissed him, and led him upstairs.

One tiny flower in late spring was still not enough to convince him. "Probably just a snowdrop or something, growing off the stump" Jerry said with a frown. She had smiled and nodded.

Suddenly she moaned as the child moved inside her. Her skin tingled with delight at a tight spasm of pain, delicious in its intensity. Soon, my love, so soon. She stared down into the garden through gritted teeth, and tried to breathe: in through her nose, out through her mouth.

It had been a cool night in late autumn. Three and a half years. Nine months ago. All summer she had waited, and for weeks she had been tense with expectation. She had sat before the fire in her gown that night, sipping a soothing herbal infusion. Chill wind scattered dry leaves into spirals in the air, that fell to tap gently on the window pane. Jerry was away on business, she was alone in the house. She stood, and opened the french windows.

The tree awaited. Moonlight glowed on its dead grey trunk, clean and scoured of scabrous moss. Chamomile, lavender and honeysuckle filled the night air as she stepped across the lawn, her light gown caught by the breeze. As she approached, dead arms reached for her, creaking in the wind, and a soft thump sounded on the ground as something fell to her feet. She knelt, and smelt a whiff of rotten leaves. She foraged in the cold wet grass and finally, after so long, her tremblings fingers closed around her prize.

Three and a half years! Through forty-two months of aching emptiness she had waited for this gift. It had been so long she cried in joy and sorrow.

She stood at the foot of the tree, staring upwards. Her gown fell open and she felt the wind and moonlight on her skin. She raised her arms in benediction, holding the gift before her.

An apple. One small, hard yellow apple, withered and spotted but round and whole. She held it up above her in triumph, then pressed the cold skin to her lips. She hungrily devoured it, skin to core, swallowing hard bitter flesh whole.

And now nine months later, her breathing came harder. Deep in through her nose, out through her mouth. She gasped as the first great pain came. She pressed her back against the window and moaned out loud, her eyes closed, her mouth a wide grimace of elation.

Jerry jumped out of bed with alarm and scrambled towards her as the next spasm came, like a wave crashing down upon her. She thrust her head back and screamed into the night, a scream of triumph as she heard the tree's arms reach out for her in sympathy. A third wave came, high and wide and clear, surging far above her before crashing down in a dizzying pain that rung in her ears. Dark water flushed through her body and outwards, flooding wet and slick across the bedroom floor.

Jerry's eyes bulged in terror. He reached her just before the next scream, slipping on the wet floor. His wet hands stained her gown with red.

Maria opened her wild eyes and screamed into the night. "Its coming Jerry!" She gripped his hands. "Its time!"

Jerry drank whiskey from a glass. He was tired, and he could hear the children in the garden, the screams, and the traffic beyond. He could hear a siren wailing, close then drifting away. It was five years later. Five years, sixty months, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days.

It was Sunday, and Claire would be home from work soon. She would be tired and smell of the hospital (antiseptic that never quite covered the smell of human effluent), but somehow she would still be cheerful. People even thought they'd met at the hospital, and though that wasn't true, they'd thought it was best to let people believe it.

He went out into the garden where the boys chased each other round bright plastic toys. They screamed and launched themselves at him, and he roared, scooping each one into his big arms. They gurgled with delight as he played the ogre, dragging them off to the dark castle. He heard Claire's keys in the door and cried in a deep booming voice "I'm gonna feed you little horrors up until you're big and tasty so I can eat you all up. What do you think I should feed you on!"

"Chips! Chips!" they cried as they wrestled him. "You'll spoil them," laughed Claire as she planted a kiss on his cheek, grateful she would not have to cook. "Won't be long," he said, and winked.

And now he sat behind the wheel of his car, at the big iron gates, unsure. Memory had been nagging at him all day but he had tried so hard to ignore it. He took a deep breath and rubbed his face with his hands. He parked, and turned off the engine.

It had been the best plot he could afford. His family had thought it was love and loss. It was that too, but he knew it was also guilt. It was guilt that had made him stay away from her grave so long. Five years. He walked up the crunching gravel slope, lined with cold stone slabs.

The doctor had asked tactfully: "You saw no signs of abdominal distension?" Jerry was almost doubled over in the chair, staring at the floor, so shocked he couldn't even cry. He shook his head. "I see," said the doctor. After a moment the doctor said, with slight embarrassment, "I uh, really do not think there was anything you could have done. It seems she went very quickly, and you were a long way from a hospital.

"She would certainly have noticed the symptoms but in her state of um, mind" He trailed off. "Pseudocyesis, uh, phantom pregnancy, that is. Quite amazing the tricks the mind can play on the body. In her condition even the pain of peritonitis must have seemed almost, ah, expected." The doctor handed him papers to sign, then said, distractedly "There was, ah, one more curious thing. The precise cause of the ruptured appendix. Had she been eating, oh, fruit of some sort? Something with very sharp pips?"

Jerry reached the top of the slope. It was sunny and south-facing, well drained, with white monuments planted in rows like cabbages, row upon row down the hill. The other graves were all marked with flowers, pink and red in neat little urns. Maria, Loving Wife, said this grave, obscured through a violent growth of green.

Jerry stood in silence, and stared upwards at the strong young sapling that grew from the fertile soil of the grave. It towered ten feet over the headstone, its glossy leaves catching the last rays of the summer sun.

From its boughs hung hundreds of small green spheres.

They were apples. Hundreds and hundreds of ripe, green apples.

"Seed", © Robert D How, December 2002

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