by Anne Berry
She was a whore he’d met trawling King’s Cross late one night. The sex had been great, every time, and he liked her too. When he was with her he felt good, powerful – up until recently, that is. He should have kept to their original arrangement – two, three times a week, no obligations, no expectations. But the thought of her going with other men bothered him. He wanted her all for himself. So he set her up in the flat and got her running the stall. And it had all seemed perfect, for a while. He hadn’t minded about his marriage, hadn’t worried so much about the baby coming early, or the business being put on hold. His life had equilibrium. Then, before he knew it, the scales had tipped up. Enrico had muscled in, rolling up to the flat whenever he felt like it, drinking his booze, and fucking his woman when he wasn’t there, he had no doubt. Taking Owen in as a lodger had been a masterstroke, his very own watchdog. He thought the game was won, but it was only that hand. Naomi’s next cards have brought it all tumbling down. So she is pregnant, talking as if she is going to have the kid, as if they are going to play at happy families. Well, he already has a family. It may not be very happy, but he sure as hell doesn’t need another one. The kid probably isn’t even his.
‘I’ve told you, I’m not hungry,’ he flares up, confronted by that other baby, his legitimate daughter.
‘All right. You don’t have to bite my head off.’
Catherine has offered to make him something to eat twice now, when he has made it clear that he has no appetite. He glowers at her. She looks dreadful, wandering about in a shapeless towelling robe stained in baby vomit. Her hair, that glorious red hair that had attracted him like a copper crown, looks unwashed and limp. She is red-eyed, a sign that she has been crying, a common occurrence these days. This is not how it is meant to be. He wants her to look pretty, to wear expensive clothes, to be tastefully made up, hair clean and brushed, exuding the fragrance of costly French perfume when he comes home. They are in the lounge of the scruffy rented terrace, her pacing, a distressed Bria wriggling at her shoulder, him in the armchair with the sagging bottom, the one he had thought such a bargain from a second-hand furniture shop in town. He knows she hates this place, but it’s all he can stretch to at present. No posh Kingston houses for them, not yet anyhow.
‘Sean . . .’ She hesitates, then fishes in the pocket of her robe, produces a slip of paper and puts it on the table next to his drink. He glances down and recognizes what it is. A gambling chit. ‘You told me you’d stopped,’ she says, her tone flat. Music thumps through the wall from next door. Wherever he is, that bloody music seems to find him. The market, the flat, and now here.
‘Are you going through my pockets now, Catherine? Is that what you’re after doing?’ His tone is low, baleful. He does not look at her but at the note, fuming that she has resorted to frisking his clothes.
‘We can’t afford it,’ she says, her stance defiant.
‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’ he counters swiftly, his suppressed rage loosed suddenly, so that she flinches back. He is fast becoming the bully his father was, he thinks miserably.
‘I’m worried, Sean.’ She has begun jigging as she speaks, rubbing Bria on her back. Far from calmed, this gesture seems to add to their daughter’s discomfort and she gives several piercing cries of protest.
He takes a gulp of his drink, neat brandy purchased from the off-licence on his way home. ‘Don’t be. It’s all in hand,’ he tells her shortly. His eyes slide up to meet with hers. After a moment she breaks the gaze.
‘I don’t know what the matter is with Bria. She’s like this almost every night,’ she frets.
‘All babies cry, Catherine. It’s only natural.’
‘Not like this. If you were here more often you’d understand,’ she accuses, her green eyes hostile.
‘Catherine, I’m sorry. But you know how it is,’ he says wearily. ‘Some nights I have to stay in London. I’ve told you, I’ve got a couple of things on the go that I need to see to.’
She shoots him a resentful look that says she knows there is another woman, that he is keeping another woman. He elects to ignore this, tops up his drink instead, and brazens it out. Bria is grizzling now, a persistent breathy whining that, like a swinging pendulum, seems to have its own indefatigable momentum. ‘Is she after being fed?’ he inquires.
‘No, of course she isn’t,’ Catherine snaps. ‘She’s not wet either, or dirty. And for your information I’ve taken her to the doctor but he says there’s nothing wrong.’ She gives a despairing sigh.
‘So, there you are then. Why don’t you just put her down for a sleep? She’s probably tired.’
‘I don’t know if she’s tired, but I am. I don’t remember when I last slept. Most days I feel like a zombie. Do you realize, Sean, that most days I feel like the living dead?’ She closes on a rising inflexion that makes him grimace and startles the baby.
‘Motherhood is hard, love,’ he pacifies. ‘I know. But it’ll get easier, as she grows. I promise.’
‘I need a break. If I don’t get some sleep soon, I don’t know what I’ll do.’ She is shouting now. Her hysteria is transmitted instantly to Bria, who whoops in a breath and, face empurpled, yells angrily.
‘What about your own mother? Couldn’t she give you a hand?’
Catherine flashes him a withering look. ‘You know what she’s like. She’ll only make things worse.’
On the farm, babies were the preserve of women. Men did not get involved. But Catherine has a kernel of the new woman in her, the one that is coming, the woman who wants more, the woman who dares to consider the impossible – equality. Sean senses this ‘coming woman’ emerging from the worn-out tatters of his wife, and he feels the floor of his world tip a little more. With a snort he ponders how long it will be before he concedes defeat and slides off. He drains his glass. ‘Give her to me. Go to bed. I’ll look after her, so.’
She hands her to him, gratefully, and hurries upstairs. He cradles the child in his arms, strokes her head. Her wisps of damp fair hair are tinted with a hint of red in the evening sunshine. She smells of baby talc and milk. He observes a pulsing fontanel, a soft spot on Bria’s skull where the cranial bones have not yet fused. The crying abruptly ceases. The aftermath of her storm, hiccups, sends powerful shudders through the small body that seem to surprise her. They have the same eyes, Sean observes suddenly. Identical. Bluish green, greenish blue, a hard one to call. Tonight they are decidedly blue. She is cocooned in a yellow wool blanket and looks red-faced and boiling.
‘You’re hot, aren’t you, my darlin’?’ says Sean, unwrapping the bundle. Under it she wears a light-green baby-grow. He undoes three of the top poppers, and opens the neck up, exposing the miniature chest. ‘Is that more like it? There you are. What say we take a walk round the estate and a peek at the stars?’ Bria blinks, and with a jerk of her head sucks in air. ‘Is that a yes?’ She yawns pinkly at him. He stares down at this wonder, this perturbing wonder, his daughter. He climbs to his feet and makes his way to the kitchen and out of the back door. The garden is a patch of lawn bordered by a leaning fence. But this is level with Sean’s head, so that however small, there is a sense of privacy in this outdoor space. ‘No stars yet for you, my darlin’.’ It is a suburban sunset. The sky is streaked with pink and orange. A baseline of lavender blue is creeping very gradually upwards. Rotating, he sees a panorama of rooftops, chimneys, aerials. The main road thunders round them. He remembers the wide spaces of Ireland, the lush greens that quenched your sight. He listens for the silences, for the calm inner strength of the Shannon. Bria is peaceful, her eyes very wide and alert now.
There is a concrete patio, with a couple of steps down to the grass. He sits at the top of these, his daughter propped on his knees, her back to his chest. ‘It’s not much, is it? But it’s only temporary, you know. Till your father gets on his feet.’ He is riding the brandy now, a distance still from the stampede that will trample his brain into blackout. ‘Don’t be after telling your mother, but I’ve g
ot a few deals going down that will make all the difference. I’ve made a connection with a man who has influence, a man who can alter the course of our lives – yours, mine, your mother’s. He’s loaned me a bit of money and in return I’m running a few errands for him. Couldn’t be simpler. I can turn this all round, you wait and see. One day your daddy’s going to be rich. What would you like, my darlin’? Take your pick from the sweetie shop of life. Anything you want an’ it’s yours. No idea? I was like that once myself. Not sure what I wanted, only, that whatever it was, I needed money to get it. I tell you what, I’ll decide for you. A great big house, with a garden you can run round in, and a pretty dress for every day of the year. How’s that? And what about a swimming pool? I’ll teach you to swim, Bria. I’ll take you to the Shannon, and together we’ll dive off the rocks. And no one will stop us, no one will tell us that the river is evil. I know her secrets and now I’ll tell you. Because you’re a water baby, my darlin’. My very own water baby.’
Chapter 10
Owen is increasingly reluctant to contact his parents. When he does, he works hard to describe a reflection quite unlike the one that stares back at him from the bathroom mirror. His father listens avidly to this Nicholas Nickleby son, to his daring exploits, to tales of his dashing days spent in the company of other actors. They do not discuss the infant phenomenon. The subject is taboo. Instead, they resort to that great British tradition and debate the weather, the oppressive heat, water rationing, plants suffering, reservoirs drying up, the desperate need for rain. That done, Owen improvises. He has told them that he has a job now in the box office of the Palace Theatre, where the extravaganza Jesus Christ Superstar is showing. He has offered to get complimentary tickets for them. He has even jauntily hummed a few tunes. His father has said that it’s a date.
What Owen does not tell them is that all attempts at securing an agent have failed, and the few open auditions he stumbled on in the magazine The Stage wanted trained dancers and singers. But Owen isn’t the least anxious that his charade will soon be discovered. He knows that his parents will never visit him. So he carries on describing the glamorous West End, the crowd of artistic, flamboyant friends he has made, how he is out every night hobnobbing with directors and producers. They receive the news that he has relocated to the heart of London with a mixture of awe and detachment. His father is awed. His mother is detached.
Owen only rings on the rare occasions when he is alone in the flat. They have a ’phone set on a small occasional table, just inside the lounge door. Sean actively encourages him to use it.
‘Family’s important, Owen. Your roots, so. Where you came from.’ Owen thinks of the beach in Devon, of the sand and the sky, of the cold indifferent sea, of his mother eating the sand, and of Sarah’s scrap of comfort blanket in the box on her bedside table. He breathes essence of Sarah, a bittersweet fragrance if ever there was one. That’s where he came from. He would give his soul to sever his roots, to cut the kite strings attaching him to his past and fly free. ‘You need to keep in touch. Your Mam might worry otherwise.’ The irony of Sean’s directive, as he lounges in a flat with his mistress, his own wife and baby home alone, seems to elude him.
Increasingly Owen’s calls are triumphs of invention. He always manages to impart some fresh titbit that signposts his path to fame. And, as if by tacit consent, his parents keep up their part in this apple-pie conspiracy. Neither of them refer to the night before he left home, to the stark red blood spattered on the lino floor. Entering the kitchen after supper, he saw his mother standing with her back to him, in front of the sink. Above her head on a wooden drying rack was a thick, white, china plate. The clusters of soapsuds were still sliding off it, drifting like light snow flurries into the sink. Behind his mother, to one side, hovered his father. He was whistling ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’, stooping and fumbling with a red-and-white checked tea towel. The glint of metal in its folds caught Owen’s eye. Brows deeply scored, he was bringing all his concentration to bear on the task of drying cutlery, as methodical with this as he was in cleaning Sarah’s shoes.
Suddenly his mother stretched her dripping wet hands upwards, in a gesture uncannily redolent of an act of worship. She plucked the pale china moon from its rack in the sky, wheeled round, and brought it crashing down on her husband’s bent head. A thud and a crack melded together. His shiny pate, criss-crossed with a few judiciously arranged grey hairs, juddered forwards, then dropped a foot or so. The segments of gleaming moon, rimmed in bright blood, clattered down, then rocked and seesawed on the tiled floor. The tea towel fluttered after them, cutlery spilling out of it. His father staggered back. He raised a shaky hand to his head in stupefaction, and stroked it over the dome of his skull. When he lowered it he saw, as did Owen, that there was blood on it, a shockingly vivid scarlet slash of it standing out bathed in bald white light. For a second they all froze, as if none of them really believed what had just happened. Then his mother fell to her knees and began gathering up slices of the moon, trying to piece the night back together. Owen took control. He helped his father into a chair, gave him a clean tea towel and told him to hold it against his head. Next he joined his mother on the floor.
‘Leave that, Mother,’ he told her, prising a wedge of china from her hands. ‘You might cut yourself. The edges are sharp.’ He spoke in the sort of tone you would use to address a timid child. He managed to raise her to her feet, and assisted her into the chair next to his father’s. And there the two of them sat staring straight ahead, like one of those famous medieval paintings of married couples. A worm of blood, only small, but a heart-stopping shade of pillar box red, made its way out from under the tea towel and slithered down his father’s forehead. It paused briefly on the shelf of his brow, gathering in the grey tangle of his father’s right eyebrow, before curling under it to skulk in the cave of his eye socket. He took his father to the hospital, clutching the now sodden tea towel to his gory head. It wasn’t fractured. They sewed up the gash with luminous purple stitches.
His last sighting of his father was on the railway platform at Didcot Station, next day, looking like a bewildered Frankenstein. His mother waved him off from their front door. Just before he climbed into the car he turned back, the sudden desire to run to her, to hug her, overwhelming him. But she had gone inside, and closed the door on him already. The Doctor prescribed his mother Valium for her nerves, and suggested she take a sabbatical from her work as a dinner lady in the local comprehensive. Probably just as well, considering how many plates she handled in her job, Owen ruminated.
Now he learns that his mother is well, extremely well actually, planning to return to work any day. She has gained so much weight that some of her skirts no longer fit. And not to be outdone, his father has been awarded a grant to buy gardening equipment, and is helping to plan the gardens for the new hotel they are building outside Wantage. In short, they are the iconic British family, as perfect as the Janet and John model who taught Owen to read in school – only, with a few significant differences.
See Father, see. See Mother, see. See John playing. John is playing ball. See the red and white ball. See it bounce high. See Janet splash, splash in the sea. Look, Mother, look. See Janet drowning. Look Father, look. See John playing. See John playing while Janet is drowning. See Mother running. See John running. See Father running. See him fishing Janet from the sea. See Janet on the sand, see Janet dying. Look John, look. Janet is dead. Janet has drowned.
Owen omits as much from their shared past, as he does from his present, in these telephone conversations. He does not tell his parents about his middle-of-night encounters with Naomi, or that when he scrutinized the patch of wallpaper she has been scratching at, he was certain he could faintly decipher a name. Mara. Nor does he report that one night, en route to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water, he found Sean sitting at the dining-room table drinking alone, gabbling away to himself.
‘What’s up, Sean?’ No response. ‘Can’t you sleep? Sean, are you okay?’
Still no response. He sat down opposite him at the table. The windows were open, a slight breeze periodically making the half-lowered rattan blinds rattle. Sean swallowed and breathed fire, then looked straight through him.
‘Labasheeda,’ he mumbled. ‘Labasheeda.’ The lava lamp on the telephone table was the only light turned on, the orange globules bouncing up and down in slow motion like excited egg yolks. The room was untidy, streaked with light and shadow. ‘My mistress, my green mistress.’ The words hardly stirred his lips, and they were muddied so Owen had to strain them from the slurry. ‘Gap-toothed Finn saw her, saw little Iona O’Neil’s ghost jigging away on the water, tossing her long black hair. A chit of a girl swallowed by the hungry green lady, sucked down, they said.’ Owen felt his hair stand up on the back of his neck. ‘She fell from the boat, see. Taking the livestock over. The lass couldn’t swim. Mind, none of us could. Because, you see, the water’s bad, a jinx, a curse. They said there were devils lurking there. But that’s not what I found when I dived into her.’
‘Sean, do you want me to get Naomi?’
He gave an open-mouthed, mournful sigh. His breath smelt fetid and sour, and Owen fought the impulse to recoil. He was still dressed, crumpled shirt, creased trousers, the sharp odour of sweat. ‘Fuckin’ Brandon Connolly. He diddled my Da every week at the creamery, but the bloody fool didn’t see it. He didn’t have a head for numbers, my Da, not like me. He wasn’t clever. There was evil in the outhouse. It waited for me there, you know, lurking in the dark and the cold, so. They said that it came from the river, but they lied. It was in their own fields, in their milking sheds and barns, in their sick heads.’ Another pull on his drink, the glass hovering halfway to the table, returning to his lips. He drained it through a mouth burnt with booze. ‘He made me strip, stand naked and shivering before him. Emmet watched through a peephole in the wood. I stared at the ball of his eye framed in a knot of wood, stared and stared at it as the belt bit into my back, my buttocks, my thighs. I didn’t cry out. I was a rock for her. And all the while the thick blood from the pig carcass dripped into the tin pail, the sickly sweet smell of it filling my nostrils, and the leather whistled, and the brass studs crucified me. But not one tear did I shed for their delight. I was her brave warrior, brave as the warriors who marched through my dreams.’ Eventually Sean dragged himself to his feet and lurched off to bed, leaving Owen with little Iona O’Neil’s ghost tap dancing on the water.