Free Lovesong by Alex Miller Page A

shrugged. ‘We have to live the lives we choose.’
    ‘My life is here.’
    ‘And John’s?’ Houria asked gently. ‘Is his life here, darling?’
    ‘John’s life is with me.’
    Houria looked at Sabiha steadily. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said, kindly but a little sad.
    Sabiha caught the sadness in her aunt’s tone. ‘We’ve all changed, I suppose,’ she said. ‘It’s what happens, isn’t it?’ She looked out the window again. Old Arnoul Fort’s light had come on upstairs, his shadow passing back and forth across the red curtain. His wife had been bedridden for years and he spent his time caring for her, their drapery shop neglected and dirty, the stock old and their custom fallen away. Sabiha sighed, aware suddenly of the sadness of all lives. She turned and reached across the table and took Houria’s hands in her own.
    Houria lifted Sabiha’s hands to her lips and kissed her fingers. ‘If you two settled down in Australia in your own home you’d probably have your little girl before you knew it.’
    ‘This is my home,’ Sabiha said. She withdrew her hands. Houria’s words made her feel tight and resistant.
    ‘Well, you can’t live in that little room up there forever, can you?’ Houria said reasonably. ‘That’s all I meant. It’s not fair to either of you. How would you manage if a child came along right now? The three of you in that tiny space? There’s no room for a child. And I can’t let you have my room. It’s still Dom’s room.’ She grinned. ‘Hey! I’d come to visit you in Australia. You could meet me at the airport. Imagine it! Me arriving at the airport and you being there to meet me! It would be so exciting. You’d be a local. You could show me everything.’
    But Sabiha was only half listening to Houria now. Why
didn’t
her child come? What
was
blocking it? Was it really that there was no room for it here at Chez Dom? She couldn’t believe that. She didn’t want to believe it. They’d had all the tests and the doctors had told them they were both perfectly healthy. John’s sperm count had been a little low on one of the results, but they said not to worry about it, it was temporary and probably due to his anxiety. John said he wasn’t anxious. But they said you can’t always tell when you’re anxious. They offered more tests but she was sick of it. She had begun to feel as if her body no longer belonged to her. And every time they had sexthey were both thinking about what day of the month it was and what her temperature was. John hated it as much as she did but he had been willing to go on with it for her sake. It was she who had called a halt.
    She often recalled with wonder and sadness the night she and John made love for the first time. She believed at the time that she had conceived that night. She was certain her little girl had begun the mysterious journey of her life. She had lain awake beside John until dawn, unable to sleep for excitement, knowing her body had welcomed his seed, imagining the conception of new life taking place deep inside her. She had her own secret view of all this. She lay down with John that night a girl and rose from their bed in the morning a woman. In the morning she rejoiced that she was no longer a virgin girl. The first, and the greatest, disappointment of her new life in Paris was to discover two weeks later that she was not pregnant. Nothing had happened. Nothing had changed. She wept for a week and was inconsolable. The seed of her child still waited, distant, untouched, silent within her. John had not reached it. Their love had not been enough. Something was missing. Something vital and real but hidden from them. It drove her crazy trying to think what it was.
    Ever since she was a little girl, Sabiha had believed the state of womanhood and the state of motherhood composed the same order of being. To be a woman was to be a mother. She could not now rid herself of this belief. She would not
try
to rid herself of it. What would