that night after the wedding. She tries to imagine what it must feel like to leave the place you know – your home, your country – and go live elsewhere. She wouldn’t have the courage. She doesn’t know how Agnes has the courage. And why, Karen asks herself, why did you come here? What have you left behind?
And then there is Jenny. Karen worries about Jenny. She has always been a little bit unstable, changeable, like a weathervane. Graeme and Robert put it down to the fact that she lost their mother at birth. They do what they can for her but when she was a child they were young men getting on with their lives. Martin did his best for the first few years, until he was no longer able. The Throckmortons are like other people in this regard; they accept their fate and get on with life. There is – has always been – a certain amount of muddling through. Karen has tried to mother Jenny, but Jenny resists, they have never got along particularly well even though Karen has been around all of Jenny’s short life. ‘Jenny,’ Karen asks from time to time, ‘is everything all right?’ ‘Yes,’ the girl replies, turning away. She is very close to her brother Graeme and Karen works hard to avoid feeling jealousy. She is not completely successful. And mothering Jenny is complicated by the difficulties she and Graeme had in conceiving their own child.
As soon as Graeme was on full salary with the police force he and Karen got married. Karen quit her job, it was what they had agreed she should do. Stay home and take care of Jenny, keep house for Graeme and Robert and their father. Have a family. But it didn’t happen the way they planned. They abandoned contraceptives on their wedding night but months passed and nothing transpired. After five years sex had become well-timed and perfunctory; another year and, despite Graeme’s reluctance to involve outsiders, Karen went to the doctor. She embarked on a series of tests that she found degrading and embarrassing; she persisted, there was no alternative. After some months they established that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her, she ovulated regularly, her tubes were clear, everything was the right way up and in its proper place. The GP said Graeme should come and see him; he’d been suggesting that all along, but Karen knew her husband wouldn’t agree so she hadn’t bothered asking. But now she was gripped by sadness and desperation; she was only twenty-six and she wanted a baby. She wanted a baby in a way that made her ache. And she’d been told there was no reason why she couldn’t have one. Her desire overruled her reluctance. She told Graeme he had to go and see the doctor or there was no point in having sex ever again.
Graeme made an appointment, and cancelled it, made another and cancelled that as well. He knew what he was going to be told. One morning after he’d left Karen weeping in the bathroom as she discovered she was menstruating yet again, he drove to London instead of going in to work. He went to a private clinic he’d seen advertised in a magazine and paid for tests. A week later he received a phonecall while on his lunchbreak. He stood at the payphone next to the toilet and insisted on being given the result there and then; the nurse in London informed him that his sperm count was very low. ‘How low?’ Too low. He did not allow the expression on his face to change. He said, ‘Thank you,’ and hung up the phone. Later that shift, while making an arrest outside a pub – drunken brawlers – he kicked one of the suspects in the groin. He later claimed the man had been resisting arrest.
It took him six months to tell Karen about the test. During that time he had three affairs with women in Peterborough – a police constable, a secretary who used to work with Karen, and a barmaid from a pub he frequented. With all three women he refused to use contraception and all three allowed him because, for a moment, they fancied having his baby. Karen
And then there is Jenny. Karen worries about Jenny. She has always been a little bit unstable, changeable, like a weathervane. Graeme and Robert put it down to the fact that she lost their mother at birth. They do what they can for her but when she was a child they were young men getting on with their lives. Martin did his best for the first few years, until he was no longer able. The Throckmortons are like other people in this regard; they accept their fate and get on with life. There is – has always been – a certain amount of muddling through. Karen has tried to mother Jenny, but Jenny resists, they have never got along particularly well even though Karen has been around all of Jenny’s short life. ‘Jenny,’ Karen asks from time to time, ‘is everything all right?’ ‘Yes,’ the girl replies, turning away. She is very close to her brother Graeme and Karen works hard to avoid feeling jealousy. She is not completely successful. And mothering Jenny is complicated by the difficulties she and Graeme had in conceiving their own child.
As soon as Graeme was on full salary with the police force he and Karen got married. Karen quit her job, it was what they had agreed she should do. Stay home and take care of Jenny, keep house for Graeme and Robert and their father. Have a family. But it didn’t happen the way they planned. They abandoned contraceptives on their wedding night but months passed and nothing transpired. After five years sex had become well-timed and perfunctory; another year and, despite Graeme’s reluctance to involve outsiders, Karen went to the doctor. She embarked on a series of tests that she found degrading and embarrassing; she persisted, there was no alternative. After some months they established that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her, she ovulated regularly, her tubes were clear, everything was the right way up and in its proper place. The GP said Graeme should come and see him; he’d been suggesting that all along, but Karen knew her husband wouldn’t agree so she hadn’t bothered asking. But now she was gripped by sadness and desperation; she was only twenty-six and she wanted a baby. She wanted a baby in a way that made her ache. And she’d been told there was no reason why she couldn’t have one. Her desire overruled her reluctance. She told Graeme he had to go and see the doctor or there was no point in having sex ever again.
Graeme made an appointment, and cancelled it, made another and cancelled that as well. He knew what he was going to be told. One morning after he’d left Karen weeping in the bathroom as she discovered she was menstruating yet again, he drove to London instead of going in to work. He went to a private clinic he’d seen advertised in a magazine and paid for tests. A week later he received a phonecall while on his lunchbreak. He stood at the payphone next to the toilet and insisted on being given the result there and then; the nurse in London informed him that his sperm count was very low. ‘How low?’ Too low. He did not allow the expression on his face to change. He said, ‘Thank you,’ and hung up the phone. Later that shift, while making an arrest outside a pub – drunken brawlers – he kicked one of the suspects in the groin. He later claimed the man had been resisting arrest.
It took him six months to tell Karen about the test. During that time he had three affairs with women in Peterborough – a police constable, a secretary who used to work with Karen, and a barmaid from a pub he frequented. With all three women he refused to use contraception and all three allowed him because, for a moment, they fancied having his baby. Karen
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