Free Next of Kin by Joanna Trollope Page A

and Caro’s intimations were as plain as most people’s declarations – that Robin’s mind was closed against Judy, long before she came. Caro had announced, in her quiet way, that she would like to adopt a baby and only after Robin, in amazement and confusion, had asked why, had said that she would very much like a child and that, as she couldn’t have one herself, she would have to do it this way.
    She had said this standing by the first cooling system that Robin had installed in the milking parlour. It was like her not to wait until mealtimes to say anything of significance, but instead to come in search of Robin wherever he was, in her queer unhurried way, and simply make her announcement.
    He had stared at her, his hands dropping from the gauges as if they had become disconnected from his brain.
    â€˜You can’t have children?’
    â€˜No,’ she said. She stood before him in her denim shirt and her jeans and her cowboy boots, with the end of her plait tied with a red bandanna. ‘I had an operation when I was nineteen as a result of an infection. I’m infertile.’ She spread her hands. ‘Nothing works.’
    He tried to control himself, to react to this bombshell with some semblance of civilization, but instead found himself shouting, ‘Why didn’t you say? Before we were married, why didn’t you say ?’
    â€˜I thought you were marrying me and not my childbearing potential.’
    â€˜I was, Caro, I was , but—’ He stopped, silenced by unhinging bewilderment.
    She said, voicing his unspoken .thoughts, ‘But all normal men want children. All normal women have children. That right? That what you mean?’
    â€˜I didn’t mean you aren’t normal, I didn’t mean that—’
    â€˜But I’m not normal. I was once, but I’m not now. I’m just normal enough, still, to want a child. That’s all.’
    He said again, almost in a whisper, ‘Why didn’t you say?’
    â€˜I didn’t think to. I wanted to stay here and stop wandering and I didn’t think to.’
    â€˜Don’t you think you should have? Don’t you think you should have thought of me?’
    She considered for a moment, and then she said, not unkindly, ‘Maybe.’
    He had shouted again, then. He had shouted about being deceived, about the impossibility of being married to someone who behaved so unilaterally, about there being no heir for Tideswell, his farm, that he had made, with his own hands, his own money. Then he had yelled, ‘I don’t want to adopt!’
    â€˜It’s the only way to have a child,’ she said. ‘Do you really want us not to have a child?’
    He had turned away from her and put his hands flat against the milking-parlour wall where the pale-blue wash he had painted it with was already beginning to flake away.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he said, and then, miserably, ‘I just assumed we’d have one. When you had settled. I suppose I was just waiting for you to be ready.’
    â€˜But I am ready,’ she said reasonably to his back. ‘That’s why I’m talking to you about adoption. I’m ready for a child now.’
    He closed his eyes. He thought of making love to her – she never initiated sex but she almost always acquiesced – and how he had been thinking one thing all those times, and she had known something quite different. There was no point in shouting at her any more, no point in raging; she had the inexorableness of some natural force which knows no laws but its own. He took his hands away from the wall.
    â€˜OK,’ he said.
    â€˜You want it?’
    â€˜No,’ he said between clenched teeth, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean, given that you will do it anyway, go ahead and do it. But don’t expect me to join in just yet. I can’t go from believing one thing to having to accept another in a flash, I