e) August 15

It starts raining again as I get into the taxi.
"Have you got your folder?" R calls from the front door
"No!" What would I do without him? Not be on time, that's for sure.
We're as bad as each other there. How is it that we can never fit
anything into the time we've given ourselves? As if whenever we cuddle
seconds put on weight; maybe it's because such time is so sweet, it has
more callories. Why can't they make clocks with the temporal equivalent
of elastic waistbands? Or faces like in cartoons that swell to hold
whole anvils, so you could have a bulge outwards between five and
quarter past when we lay in each other's arms in bed feeling like two
clouds merging?

The taxi driver says something about the weather. I reply what R told
me: that it's the tail end of a hurricane. The taxi driver agrees, says
it's much worse in Florida. All taxi drivers here seem to think of
Florida as their heartland, while being doomed to take fares all day
and night to pay for holidays to their spiritual home. Is it Nirvana to
be a taxi driver in Florida? Are there rebels there who dream of one
day coming to a small rainy island off the west coast of
Scotland?

I look out of the windscreen through splattering raindrops like eyelids
with splash lashes. R gets into the taxi, anorak rustling. He has put
the folder in the bag we got buying his socks on the mainland : I feel
all cosmopilitan.

At the hospital we climb up the rmp past the flowerbed with the dead
long grass, roses rising from it flowering lushly pink as a
grandmother's lipstick. I guess everyone is too busy to do any
gardening, just pour the occasional gallon of weedkiller about and hope
for the best : the soft luminosity of the result a triumpth of nature
over nurture

We are variously five to ten minutes late, depending on which
clock/watch we look at. I can relate to this kind of time keeping.
Everyone in reception seems very busy so we sit down in the bit with
the new drinks machine which does hovercraft impressions. It has a sign
on it saying WARNING THIS MACHINE IS ALARMED. I don't know why. There
is a very old lady asleep in a wheelchair next to an elderly couple.
Even the mobile of stars which we thought sweet on our first visit, has
no breeze to move it - until the drinks machine gets into its stride
;then the ground shakes and the elderly couple wakes up. It is the most
alarming thing here.

After 10 minutes I say to R we should go to reception and tell someone
we are here, then hide out of sight so he has to do the telling. He
does a very timid cough, then tries knocking on the wooden sill, then a
bit louder. He has caught someone's attention, says we've come to see
the midwife and waves his arm to indicate me, then realises I'm out of
sight and looks embarrassed. I feel very guilty. They are amazed we
didn't go straight through.

We just about remember the way between us since a few weeks ago. It is
very quiet today, no nurses bustling in the corridors. Some children
are squeeking further in. There is only one chair. I suggest sitting on
R's knee, but he says no, so we both stand till a friendly lady comes
in and offers to find another one which makes me feel bad

Both sitting, holding hands it is so peaceful I hardly think of the
last time we were in this room when I couldn't stop crying. A
brightness of little children sandle-patters laughing past the door,
calling "bye", their Mum follows. A large lady like a friendly cat
calls "bye" waving after them and smiles at the Mum, then comes
in.

I have not seen this midwife before. She smiles at us, comfortably.
After a little chat she asks me to get on the couch. I slip off my
shoes (glad by some freak of nature that I'm wearing matching socks -
hadn't realised I'd have a scan today so soon after the last one) get
on the couch, undo my trousers, which are getting TIGHT (I'll be size
16 in a few weeks at this rate!) and she puts jel on my tummy. It's a
different sort of scanning. In seconds I can hear a faint rhythm
"There!" she says, moving the machine. A quick light beat fills the
room. It is our baby's heart! The life in my womb! I twist round, can't
see R, but know he is as thrilled as me from the smile the midwife
gives him, as if all our faces were mirrors bouncing the joy at hearing
this sound for the first time.
Well, there had been a heart beat in the big hospital, but it had been
so loud it seemed harsh, and all my attention had been on the jagged
line zigzagging across the screen : was it regular, was it OK? Now, I
could HEAR it, another instrument in our orchestra of love, so much
quicker than ours, like all small creatures.

When R was little he said he always used to find out where his parents
hid his presents at Christmas and Birthdays. I always wanted to be
suprised. Now, he is so keen on knowing how big the baby is, what it
looks like at every stage. I never wanted to know what my presents were
because I couldn't bear not to have them THEN, and, with every scan, I
long more than anything to hold our baby's weight, my arms ache to curl
round his curves, look into his eyes, see his mind looking back at me,
and I've another 20 weeks to go! (we are convinced it is a boy, though
have asked not to be told. Either is fine though :0))

I haven't brought a specimin, and go off to the loo with one of those
little cups made out of cardboard eggbox stuff, in the shape of an
Aladdin's lamp. When I come back, R and the midwife are deep in talk. I
hand over the lamp thing, wrapped in a paper towel. The midwife says
she hadn't realised what a traumatic time I'd had. For a second I can't
think what she's talking about, see she's been reading something with a
graph on, realise it must be the result of my last blood test. Talking
about it does make me want to cry again, but it is more from the memory
of how I felt on getting the result than how I feel about it NOW, for
now it doesn't matter, now all we care about is to have our child and
give him all the love that has been welling up in us for the last 20
weeks, and the 20 weeks to come

Now I don't care what my parents say. I no longer think I can't do
anything right : I KNOW what they want me to do is wrong. Again. The
past is dead grass

She gives me another blood test (I'm much better about these now,
hardly even flinch, let alone yelp...) as I keep being dizzy, and a
form to give my manager at work so I can get maternity leave, and we
go

Out past the pink roses and across the playing field in petal soft sun,
the grass thick and bouncy as hope. A class of small children,
butterfly bright, is doing something involving lots of laughing and
squeeling coming from another field.

We get to the hedge R goes through to the call centre where he works,
and we kiss goodbye

At home, it begins to rain. I listen to the drops fall, light and
quick, and curl my hands round my tummy