The Factory Girl by Maggie Ford

Author:Maggie Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473503175
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Chapter Seventeen

‘Gerry, my love, it’s been more than four weeks. You must start making an attempt to get over this.’

Her only reply was to look at him as though he were speaking some foreign language. It was like this the whole time and was driving him mad for all he tried to see things from her side. Granted, it probably did not seem that long to her since the loss of the baby; granted, it was still all too fresh in her mind to grasp that life had to go on; granted, that had the baby lived it would be lying in its crib, but all the grieving in the world wouldn’t alter what had happened. Yet she seemed to think that it would.

The crib had been put up in the loft along with the box of baby clothes, the fluffy toys, the teething rings, the napkin squares, the little baby bath – all at his insistence in a vain attempt to stop Geraldine moping, going endlessly through the stuff and weeping at each unused item, and especially in an effort to try to stop her referring to her lost child by name as though it were alive – Caroline this, Caroline that. He wondered how much longer he’d be able to put up with it.

By now she should be coming to terms with her loss but really she was no better than the day he’d brought her home from hospital, her face expressionless with grieving, and should he mutter so much as one word, be it in sympathy or sorrow, her face would close and become vaguely hostile as though she were entirely alone in her grief.

Couldn’t she see how keenly he felt it too? When they’d come home from the hospital he’d expected it to be in joy and triumph, she seated next to him, her face radiant, tender, bending over the little bundle she held so lovingly, so proudly. No one could begin to know that feeling of coming home that day – the emptiness, the silence cocooned only by the low rumbling of the car’s engine as he drove.

But all that had been a month ago. It was time she made some effort towards recovery. She wasn’t the only one grieving. He was as disappointed, as devastated as she, but it wasn’t as though they’d known the baby. She should never have begun choosing names before it was born. Arthur it was to have been called had it been a boy, Caroline for a girl. He’d been happy to let her do the naming, himself having none in mind. She’d said that giving it a name made her feel as though she knew it already.

‘Almost,’ she’d said, ‘as if she’s already a little person,’ having made up her mind it would be a girl. No doubt that too had added to her grief. And now look at her.

He felt angry, frustrated, impatient, not knowing how to deal with her. Life had to go on. He was learning to face it and so should she; he needed to get on with his business.

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