Baby Love Read online

  I showed them into the kitchen. I had thought so hard about this and now all I could think was, ‘I wish we’d met somewhere else’. I felt a profound unease at not being able to read the wife at all.

  ‘My wife,’ said Jim. ‘Nora.’

  Nora. Nora. Well that tells me nothing at all. Hey, stranger, who the hell are you and what are you doing here?

  She smiled, a closed smile. I put the kettle on. What else?

  Lily was upstairs. She’d said she didn’t want to come down because some friends of her teddy’s mummy were coming round. I called her. I was Judas. That woman there replaced my sister in this creep’s affections and they want you … I don’t know what they want of you but they want you.

  Lily came down slowly, bringing the teddy, looking at the floor.

  Jim’s face was set, still.

  Nora looked up at her and started to laugh.

  ‘Oh, what a little darling!’ she exclaimed. Lily is a darling. A dark golden creature, with long dark hair and curving golden cheeks. She’s quite like an animal: furry, tempestuous on occasion. Clever, kind, but won’t be patronized. I suppose she got her darkness from Jim, but the quality of it was so different. His is Celtic, hers is like blondeness made dark. Like honey.

  ‘Hello, Lily,’ said Jim. He held his arms out as if to hug her. Nora leaned forward to take her arm. These fuckwits know nothing about children. Lily went behind my legs, twining like a cat. I sent her ‘hate them’ messages through my knees, and regretted them, and didn’t regret them. It is wrong to make a child hate her father. With any luck she’ll hate him of her own accord.

  Nora looked at me as if she expected me to shoo Lily off my legs and into their arms. Expect on, sunshine. I did nothing. Lily twined, and wanted to climb me. I picked her up, put her on my hip, went to a chair on the far side of the table, and pushed a plate of biscuits towards them. What the hell do they expect?

  ‘What a beautiful little girl,’ said Nora again. Lily didn’t look at her. Jim looked as if he couldn’t believe that I wasn’t even going to say ‘come on, darling’, as mothers do whenever they ask their children to betray themselves.

  Nora was flummoxed. She looked at Jim. Jim looked at me. Nora looked at me. Lily looked at the stitching on my shirt. Almost visibly, Nora fell back and regrouped.

  ‘I brought you a present,’ she said to Lily’s back. Oh, so it’s going to be like that.

  The present, like the clothes, was expensive. Harrods bag, tissue paper, little tag (wrapped by shop assistants, at a guess). Lily uncoiled enough to accept it, and murmur thank you.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it, then?’ said Jim, in a Father Christmas voice. Lily looked at him for the first time. He flushed. With his face so determined and his voice so fake I considered sympathizing with him, but decided against.

  He has a wife for Christ’s sake! They can have their own damn child!

  Lily pulled at the tissue paper.

  ‘Here, let me help,’ said Jim, suddenly standing and coming round the table. Lily pulled the package away from him. He sat down, squashed. So small, and yet so effective when it comes to squashing people four times their size.

  It was a Polly Pocket Fairy Princess Ballroom; pink, plastic, spangly, shiny, with electric lights that worked. It had four little dolls a quarter of an inch high with fairy dresses on, and wings. It had a balloon that went up and down, with a basket you could put the dolls in. It had a dancefloor that spun round when you turned a tiny silvery knob. The whole thing closed up into a pink star-shaped handbag that you could carry with you wherever you went. It was beautiful. Lily gazed at it.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lily murmured, and climbed down between my feet to play with it on the floor.

  Nora wanted more than that.

  ‘Do you like it, Lily?’ she said, calling down to between my knees.

  ‘Yes,’ came the reply. Nothing more.

  Nora looked at Jim again. I touched Lily’s head gently, and said, ‘I’ll make some tea.’ They couldn’t leave immediately and actually I didn’t want them to. I wanted them to see exactly how difficult, uncomfortable and completely out of their depth this situation was. I wanted them to know in their blood that Lily was nothing to do with them; to present them with a clear view of the shining armour that encircled the two of us, protecting us and hiding us yet at the same time revealing with brilliant and brutal clarity that secrets and intimacies and love such as they could never hope to know dwelt within. I wanted them to go home crying.

  Lily shuffled herself and the new toy over to be between my feet at the cooker as I poured the water into the teapot. ‘Move back, love, it’s hot,’ I said, but she shook her head. I moved the teapot to the very back of the work surface. I will not be faulted.

  After shuffling back with me to the table, not looking up, she jumped up and whispered to me that she wanted to show the ballroom to the teddies, and ran upstairs.

  ‘She seems a very affectionate little girl,’ offered Nora. Yes, to me. I murmured a nothing.

  Jim’s face was set again. He too had prepared, and had had no idea what would happen.

  ‘Love’s not automatic, you know,’ I said suddenly. ‘It’s not like eyes meeting across a crowded room. You have to earn a child’s love.’ I stopped just as I realized that my words might come over as a comfort, rather than a gibe.

  Nora took them as comfort.

  ‘I’m sure we will earn it. Won’t we, darling?’

  Won’t we, darling. Won’t we, darling. The mantra of the happily nuclear. I don’t hate their being happy. The happiness they have is not the happiness I don’t have. Anyway, I am happy. Quite. I think.

  ‘Uh, yes, yes,’ Jim said.

  He wanted to see pictures of her as a baby. I pointed to one stuck in the door of a glass-fronted cupboard, then relented and handed it across to him. It showed her grinning and curly-mopped in front of a Christmas tree, a dark pixie aged about six months.

  ‘She’s so beautiful,’ he said. Then, ‘How’s it been? Practically? Financially, if you like?’

  I didn’t like.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘You go to work and everything? Who looks after her?’

  Do I have to answer these questions?

  Well I decided I would. My reluctance to do anything civil was apparent enough. I wasn’t going to give them actual ammunition.

  ‘I work from home. She goes to a nursery, and spends some afternoons with a friend’s children.’

  ‘But that can’t give you enough time, surely …’

  ‘It does.’ I work in the evenings sometimes, while she sleeps. But I’m not going to tell him that.

  ‘But you don’t have a nanny or anything …’

  ‘We don’t need one,’ I said. ‘Do you work, Nora?’

  It turns out she is a travel agent. Turns out she is rather high up, actually, in travel agenting. Well, I suppose someone has to be.

  Actually I am glad. Judges don’t take babies away from happy homes to give them to career women.

  Lily’s voice came down the stairs: ‘Mu-um, I need you …’

  ‘Excuse me.’ I went up. She wanted to go to the loo.

  ‘Have the persons gone yet?’

  ‘No, love.’

  ‘Can they go soon?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I hope so back,’ she said. I smiled. ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I love you back,’ she said. I wiped her bum and said, ‘Do you want to come down?’

  ‘You’re not my mummy but you are my mummy,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right, honey. Janie was your mummy but she died so I’m being your mummy.’

  ‘Who will be my mummy after you?’

  ‘I’ll always be your mummy if you want me,’ I said.

  ‘I want you,’ she said.

  ‘I want you back,’ I said.

  ‘Do they know my mummy?’

  ‘They did, when she was alive. Well, the man did. The woman is his wife.’

  ‘T
he lady.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s not my mummy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Children have daddies,’ she said.

  Not now. Why now? How does she know?

  ‘Yes, love.’

  ‘I haven’t got a mummy or a daddy.’

  I hugged her. ‘You’ve got me and Grandma and Grandpa and Brigid …’

  ‘And Caitlin and Michael and Anthony and Christopher and Maireadh and Aisling and Reuben and Zeinab and Larry and Hassan and Omar and Younus and Natasha and Kinsey and Anna and …’ She was off on the game of listing the ones she loved. Reassuring herself.

  ‘And I love mummy even if she is dead.’

  ‘Of course. And so do I.’

  ‘And so do I.’

  ‘And so do you.’

  ‘And so do you. And she loves me too.’

  ‘Yes she does.’

  ‘And when she comes back to life she can come and live with us.’

  ‘She won’t come back to life, darling.’

  ‘But if she does.’

  ‘Yes, if she does. But she won’t.’

  ‘So I’ll live with you for ever and ever.’

  What do you say?

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes, hon?’

  ‘If you have a baby in your tummy will it have a daddy?’

  Oh, blimey. Maireadh’s pregnant and so’s one of the teachers, so it was bound to come out at some stage.

  ‘Yes, love. But I haven’t got a baby in my tummy.’

  ‘Can I borrow its daddy? If I want one?’

  ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We went downstairs. Jim tried to play with the ballroom with Lily but he didn’t have a clue. Anyway his fingers were too big. After another fifteen minutes or so they left. The tea was cold, untouched. Like Nora, I thought, irrelevantly. Though presumably she wasn’t untouched.

  *

  If he wants regular visiting rights it will be very hard for me to get a court to refuse him. No one will accept now that he was violent. Nobody ever proved anything. He hasn’t been, to my knowledge, since Janie’s death. I could try to find out. Funnily enough, Harry might know. Harry always hated him. He might know. If there’s anything to know. Perhaps there is.

  If he wants parental responsibility he will have to apply for it. Because they weren’t married, he has no claim on anything unless Janie or the courts give it to him. And she’s not going to, is she?

  I have parental responsibility jointly with Mum and Dad. I have three years of looking after her. I have something he doesn’t have.

  I don’t think I frightened them off for good. Each of them, separately, seemed to have something in them that meant they would cling on. The tidiness of her clothes and her dark head hummed with efficiency, achievement, the chosen object in the correct place, priorities listed, and carefully polished successes ticked off. She wouldn’t go for what she couldn’t get. But she doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know children. Perhaps she is beginning to know the desire for them … mother-hunger. Mother-hunger would eat her alive. And those who are astounded by the force of mother-hunger when it hits them are not usually prepared for the force of the tidal wave that follows: the love of a child. The love of a child can destroy nations. Love for a lover is a game next to baby love.

  They each had a reason. I didn’t know what. But he didn’t lie when he said it wasn’t a whim.

  But they haven’t a clue. They want the child; I love the child. I am armed to the teeth with existing love.

  FIVE

  In the Park with Harry

  The next Saturday night, Harry was there. It wasn’t till I saw him, slouching against one of the big tacky-mirrored columns that surround the dancefloor, that I got a shot of the … conscience? doubt? fear? that I had been holding off since talking to Ben Cooper. I was there to make friends with someone I had loved, in a way, for three years, in order to spy on him, meet his cronies and report on them to the police. I was some kind of scumbag. What kind of scumbag? The kind who would do anything to protect a tiny little big-eyed kid that my only sister, deceased, left to me to take care of. How was I protecting her? By keeping on the right side of the law. However it was that the law required.

  So I lurked by the bar trying to peer over the crowd to see how he looked. Pretty much the same. Same lean slouch, same long long legs, same cropped hair, same caramel skin. No no no, I can’t do this. But I had to.

  It’s easy to happen to be next to someone in a crowd. In fact I was a little in front of him so that he could see me, with my same lean slouch, my same long hair, my same peaches and cream skin which has so miraculously survived so many miles of motorcycling and so many late smoky nights in Levantine dives, and which still makes people who don’t know me think I must be just off the boat from the Home Counties.

  When the arm slid around my waist I saw for a moment every muscle and vein and scar on it, every streak of oil beneath each nail on the hard-working hand. The back of his hand that I knew so well. For a moment, feeling that arm around me, I caught my breath. Then whoops! To the performance. Turn my head, sharp with annoyance, all prepared to slap the insolent bugger. But – good lord – but surely it can’t be! Good lord, Harry! But what a surprise! All this Goodness Me had to be mouthed and acted anyway because of the volume of the music. He grabbed my hand and led me back through the turmoil towards the door. His hand was hard and cool but smoother than I recalled it.

  Harry was never one for small talk so I didn’t have to tell him what I was doing there, which was lucky because I hadn’t prepared a reason. Does this mean I have an honest heart or a stupid brain? If I am to do this I must do it well.

  ‘How the fuck are you?’ he wanted to know. And then immediately, ‘Look I’m really sorry about the chair. Really really sorry, it was stupid. Really stupid. That whole thing – um – God. I’m sorry. Forgive me, yeah?’

  Lily says things like that: ‘Can I have some chocolate, yes?’ Steamrollers me with positivity. Forgive him? Forgive him? No, I was just going to do something for which he would have to forgive me. That’s fair, isn’t it, in some sick way?

  ‘Come and dance,’ he said. Does he not want to talk? Well, it’s hard to talk anyway. And we were dancing, and the years rolled back. Close up, I was glad to see, he looked older. And better. Which I was not so glad to see. A little hollower in the cheek, a little craggier in the nose. The grin more muscle and less cheek. Half-way through the number he had an erection and for a split second I believed that it would be absolutely worthwhile to forget everything about reality and tomorrow and Lily and Cooper and Jim and just let Harry pull me into a dark corner. A split second.

  So I said, ‘Come on, let’s go to the bar.’

  We retired to the edge of a crowded semi-circular banquette where we couldn’t talk, and I said I had to get home because of the babysitter and he said, ‘Janie’s kid?’ and I said, ‘Yes’ and he said, ‘God, all that …’ and I said, ‘Do you want to hear about it?’ and he said, ‘Yes, I do’ and that was how we ended up in the Holland Park tea-room the next day, him and me and Lily, talking about 1993.

  *

  ‘I heard a bit about it,’ Harry said, fingering his coffee cup. ‘You know, the gist.’

  The gist. I supposed that even something that huge could have a gist. Huge. Of course, it’s tiny too. A tiny little domestic tragedy. Well, the days are gone when I would get upset about somebody using a word like gist. Time was nobody could say anything. That was then. Now I am … adjusted to it.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought what a bloody mess. I don’t know – I mean, I didn’t know about children then.’

  ‘Do you now?’ I was suddenly struck that Harry might have children, a wife, anything. Life doesn’t stand still because I’m not there to observe it. Lily doesn’t know that. She was talking to the mirror the other night on her way to bed, whispering to it: ‘Now, mirror, don’t go away just because I�
�m not here.’ I remembered a letter Brigid’s Caitlin had had from a kid who’d moved back to Ireland. ‘Dear Caitlin, I’m six now, are you any older?’

  ‘No. But you see people, see how it matters to them. They get that look. Like you now. I … no. You can understand it, sort of, but you don’t have to … anyway.’

  A silence. Harry as ever was being a little gauche when it came to grown-up things. Lily was chasing pigeons. Posh people were walking about. I found myself playing my old playground game: telling the mothers from the nannies. Children out with mothers were better dressed. Mothers like to show off. Nannies do the laundry. Trotters versus Adams, Harrods versus BabyGap. In Shepherd’s Bush the equivalent would be BabyGap versus the Market. So near and yet so far. I like it up here, the posh side of the roundabout. The people may be no happier but their sad faces have better make-up.

  And it’s home, too, in a way. Janie and I were born working class in Holland Park just as the neighbourhood turned posh, and just as the posh parents started sending their children to Holland Park Comprehensive in those idyllic 1960s. Janie and I became scholarship girls at posh schools. We ended up talking posh to our cockney father and talking cockney to our teachers; ‘Don’t say what, say pardon’ at home, and ‘Don’t say pardon, say what’ at school. We were inverted snobs with no blood or breeding. At the time it was great, shoplifting in Biba and smoking joints in the park and running round with dukes’ daughters, doing the ouija board in great empty flats in Eaton Square, where the nanny was too busy shagging the butler to notice what we were doing to the drinks cabinet.

  Later on, I called it socialism and urban reality and thought it was great. Janie called it a mess and blamed the parents. Janie said it was a bloody fantasy and they should have made up their minds what they wanted us to be. I said surely that was our job. Janie said that they were meant to equip us, at least. I said, well, they equipped me … anyway, what more do you want? They’re still married and you’ve got your bloody degree, for God’s sake. You didn’t starve or get sent down a mine. Janie said, yes, well, that’s all just dandy, isn’t it.

  Janie always wanted to know where she stood. I wanted to make it up as I went along. Perhaps because all along I actually did know where I stood. On my own two feet – perhaps because I was earning so early – while Janie was more often standing on other people’s. Come to think of it, Janie’s was a more dangerous position. Janie was an attention girl. Every night till we left home, in our shared bedroom, there was either a big sisterlove or a furious sisterhate going on. And there were a million phone calls through our carefully separate universities – Oxford for her, Cambridge for me, only the best, you know, all those scholarships paid off – and the flat carefully not shared when we came back to London. But equally carefully not far apart.