by Tony Parsons
Over the heads of the twenty children who were facing him, Rory watched her looking for somewhere to sit down. The students ranged in age from five to fifteen, all of them barefoot and in their pristine white uniforms and coloured belts, all of them standing to attention, even the little ones, hanging on his every word, waiting for him to talk a bit more about leg blocking techniques with the feet.
‘The inside snapping block – nami-ashi in Japanese – is useful if your assailant is attempting to kick you in the groin.’
Cat smiled shyly at him from the back of the room.
Ah, but she doesn’t need heels with those legs, Rory thought. And she doesn’t need lipstick with that mouth. And a woman like that doesn’t need a special dress.
She’s beautiful already.
When the class was over, and he was showered and changed, Rory told Cat he knew a little sushi restaurant nearby. The place turned out to be crowded, with reserved signs placed on the two remaining tables, and they were asked if they minded eating at the bar. They conferred, decided they didn’t mind at all, and settled themselves opposite the white-capped chef deftly working over slivers of raw fish.
‘What I like about Japanese restaurants is that you can eat dinner alone,’ he said. ‘Because you can just sit at the bar. You can’t do that in French or Italian restaurants. Or even Thai and Chinese places. Everybody thinks you’re Johnny-no-mates. In a Japanese restaurant, you can eat by yourself and nobody looks twice.’
‘But it’s nicer if you have someone with you,’ Cat said. ‘Even here – sitting at the bar. It’s nicer if you’re with someone.’
He smiled. ‘I guess so.’
‘I’ve missed that,’ she said, and he could tell that it was not an easy thing for her to say. ‘I’ve missed having someone.’
They sat in silence while the waitress placed miso soup, green tea and a lacquered bowl of sushi in front of them.
‘Thanks for looking after my boy.’
‘It was no problem.’
‘I should have called you.’
The bulk of him seemed to be very close. Cat had forgotten how big he was, how solid. Nothing like all those skinny boys she had found in clubs.
‘I’ve been pretty busy. With work. My sister and the new baby.’
‘Megan? She’s had her baby?’
‘A little girl. Poppy. Poppy Jewell.’
His face lit up with real pleasure. ‘That’s fantastic. Give her my best.’
Of course, she thought. Megan was once one of his students.
‘She must be very happy,’ Rory said.
‘Well – it’s kind of more complicated than that. I wouldn’t call it happy. Not exactly.’
‘What’s wrong?’ He thought of his ex-wife, and all the inexplicable tears after their son was born. ‘Postnatal depression or something? I’m sorry, it’s none of my bloody business.’
‘No, it’s fine. I know you like Megan, and she’s always been mad about you. I’m not sure I know where plain old exhaustion ends and postnatal depression starts. I am not sure anyone does.’
She was unguarded and open with him – all the things he loved about her. Flushed with feeling, full of life. Nothing like the stranger, all disappointed and cold, she had been at the end, at the end of them. This was the Cat he recognised, despite the lipstick and the heels and the special dress. He couldn’t resist her.
‘Me too,’ he said, as he snapped open his wooden chopsticks. ‘I’ve missed having someone too.’
It takes time to learn to sleep with someone, he thought later.
Not just the sex – although there was that too – but the physical act of sharing a bed with someone, of actually spending the night together. The tugs on the duvet. The legs and the arms that could wrap you up or jab you in the ribs. It took months, years, to get it right. But sleeping with Cat was effortless, and he loved that.
He felt physically closer to her than he ever had to any woman – he knew that long body so well, from the funny toes (the middle one all squished up where her shoes hadn’t been changed quickly enough when she was a growing child), the long limbs, the small breasts, the goofy smile – all teeth and gums, a smile like the sun coming out of a cloudy sky – all the way up to the ears with their ancient, pinpoint scars of piercing (Jessica with a needle heated up over the stove, when Cat was fourteen and Jessie was ten – the blood was everywhere, apparently). He knew her body as well as he knew his own, and he still hadn’t had enough of it. And he was happy and proud that the pair of them knew how to share a bed.
‘I want my child to learn karate,’ she said into his neck, easing herself into the curves of his body. ‘If I ever have one.’
He smiled in the darkness. ‘Your child, eh? Have you considered kung fu?’
‘I like karate.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I want you to teach her. You only teach karate, don’t you? You can’t switch about, can you?’
‘No, you can’t really keep switching about. You choose a discipline and you stay with it for ever.’ The voices were soft in the night. This was the terrible thing about breaking up with her, he realised. He had lost his best friend. ‘It’s a bit like – I was going to say it’s a bit like choosing a partner. But how long does that usually last?’
‘Ten years,’ she said. ‘Ten years is how long the average marriage lasts today. I read it in a paper. But that’s when people get it wrong. If you get it right, I guess it must be longer.’
He rolled over and faced her.
‘What are we doing here, Cat?’
She took a breath.
‘I think maybe we should get back together again. And I think that maybe we should have a baby. At least, I think we should try.’
‘Cat.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘Cat, I can’t have children. You know that.’
‘It’s okay. I talked to Megan. She’s a doctor, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘She said you could get it reversed. Get your vasectomy reversed.’
‘Do it all again?’
‘Not do it all again. Do it the other way round. Have the operation in reverse. A reverse vasectomy. That’s what they call it. Instead of cutting your – what do you call them, the tubes?’
‘Vases. I think that’s it.’
‘Instead of cutting them, they stitch them together.’
It was a mistake. A beautiful mistake. He was only going to get hurt again. Better to have made the break and not look back. Too late now.
‘And do you know what the odds are of that working?’
‘I know it’s a long shot. Megan said. I know that when you have it done in the first place, they tell you to consider it irreversible.’
‘Exactly. You think I never thought about this? You think I never contemplated getting it reversed? And trying for a kid?’
Just to keep you happy, he thought. Just to keep you.
‘But it happens, Rory. Men get this thing reversed and they have a baby. Just like someone always wins the lottery.’
‘Do you know the odds against winning the lottery?’
‘As I say, I know it’s a long shot. But I also know that someone always wins. I think you would be a great dad. Strong, gentle, funny. I think you are a great dad.’
‘But I’m tired. Do you understand that? I’ve done it all. Even if it was possible – and I have my doubts – I have done it all before, years ago. I have been through the lot. From sleepless nights and dirty nappies to finding a piece of hash in the sock drawer.’
‘But the baby will give you energy. The baby will make you young again. The baby will give you a reason to live.’
She meant it. She wanted it so badly. And really, truly, she wanted to go through it with him. No other man.
They were at the moment when he either had to get dressed and go home, or take her in his arms. So he took her in his arms, and she placed a kiss on his mouth.
‘I have missed this,’ he said,
the heat rising in him again. ‘I have missed this so much.’
‘I always thought that you learned how to be a mother from your own mother,’ she said. ‘But that’s not true. I see it with Megan and Poppy. It’s your child. It’s your child that teaches you how to be a mother.’
His mouth was on her, all over her, wanting to know those long limbs, to commit them to memory so he would have them for ever.
‘You want it too, don’t you?’ she said. ‘We want the same thing, don’t we?’
But by then he was kissing her back, and he couldn’t talk, and so Cat’s question went unanswered.
Poppy remained in her incubator for three weeks and then she was released into the world.
She had stayed in the Intensive Care Unit for so long that some of the nurses cried to see her go.
They almost feel like she’s their baby, thought Megan. And maybe they are right.
The nurses had fed her, clothed her, fretted over her. They had monitored her breathing, and placed a stuffed monkey in her incubator, and come running when she cried in the night.
It was true that Megan had lain there while the baby was plucked from inside her, and it was Megan who squeezed a modest amount of milk from her breasts, but it was the nurses in ICU who had usually been the ones to place the bottle to Poppy’s lips. It was the nurses in the ICU who had not been overwhelmed by Poppy’s birth.
Megan had left hospital after a week, still feeling like she had been sliced in half and sewn together again, and she had visited Poppy on a daily basis. She felt more like a failure than ever. She wasn’t back at work, and she wasn’t taking care of her daughter. I’m not a doctor and a mother, she thought bitterly. I’m neither. Lawford and the others see my patients, and the nurses in the ICU take care of Poppy.
Now that time was ending. Now the cot in the bedroom of her little flat would be filled with a real live baby. Now she was on her own. They wrapped Poppy up in her oversized winter clothing, and went out into the world.
One of the nurses held the baby while Megan struggled to fit the car seat in the back of Jessica’s Alfa Romeo. In the end the nurses did it for her. Poppy was placed in the car seat, and it dwarfed her. Megan shuddered. Was her baby really going to be driven through London traffic?
Jessica drove home as though she had a cargo of high explosives in the back. Megan sweated and fretted, silently cursing belligerent cyclists who jumped lights and all those Jeremy Clarkson groupies in their white vans and BMWs. Poppy slept through the entire journey.
Kirk was waiting for them outside the flat.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Megan said. ‘Is it going to be like this every day? This guy just turning up unannounced and uninvited?’
‘Megan,’ Jessica said. ‘He is her father.’
Kirk looked through the car window and got this big foolish grin on his face as he looked at Poppy. ‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Jessica said. ‘He’s crazy about Poppy. Give him that.’
When Jessica and Megan were struggling with the straps to the car seat, Kirk stepped in and quickly released the baby.
Megan carried the sleeping baby in her giant throne up to the top floor, and all the noises of her building – Eminem cursing his mother on the ground floor, Sky Sports blasting from the second floor, a man and a woman screaming at each other on the third floor – suddenly appeared in a ghastly new light.
Megan thought, how can I bring a baby into this place?
She felt a creeping sense of shame as she carried her daughter up to her new home, Kirk and Jessica following close behind. And, yet again, that crushing feeling of getting everything wrong. She had always felt that she was on top of her life. And now it seemed as if life was finally and permanently on top of her.
Megan laid the still sleeping Poppy in her cot. Jessica kissed her fingers, and placed them on the baby’s tiny brow.
‘Congratulations, you two,’ she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. ‘She’s perfect. She’s your precious little darling.’
Then she left them.
They watched Poppy sleeping for a while, and Megan had to smile. The baby had made herself completely at home. Three weeks old and the weight of a small fish, yet she looked as though she owned the place. Megan and Kirk crept from the room.
‘I hope you don’t mind me coming round unannounced,’ he said. ‘I called the ICU. The nurses told me Poppy was coming home today.’
‘It’s fine. But maybe in future, you could give me a call?’
‘Of course.’
She attempted a fragile smile.
‘I mean, it’s not as though we’re married or anything.’
‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘But you have to understand.’
‘What do I have to understand?’
‘I want to be a part of this baby’s life. I want to support you any way I can. And – I love her. That’s all. I love our daughter. She’s great, isn’t she? She’s brilliant! A real little fighter. She’s done so well. You’ve both done so well.’
‘It’s funny, isn’t it? You can love a baby without knowing her. But not an adult. You can’t love an adult without knowing them, can you? You can’t even like them very much.’
‘You’re talking about us, aren’t you?’ He smiled. ‘You mean you don’t know me.’
He watched her impassive face. How distant they all are, he thought. The women we had sex with in some other time and place. There are none so strange as our old lovers. But there’s something Megan doesn’t understand, he thought. It’s not over between us yet.
‘Well, maybe now’s the time to start knowing me,’ he said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because we have a baby, and you’re all alone.’
She shot him a look.
‘I’m not alone, pal. Don’t you ever say that again. I don’t need the pity of a part-time waiter. I have two sisters, and Poppy and I are not alone. And I know you well enough already – this ageing surfer boy who wants to play at happy families for a while, because he got bored and jaded with everything else.’
‘I’m not a surfer. I’m a diver. And – what? You think you’re not easy to read?’
Megan snorted with disbelief. The bloody cheek of the man.
‘Let’s see you try.’
Kirk folded his arms, sizing her up.
‘The youngest child, indulged by everyone in the family. Clever at school, breezes through all her exams. Then the little princess gets her heart broken by her first serious boyfriend.’
‘Meets some guy at a party,’ she said. ‘Has a few too many – as these trainee doctors always do. Gets knocked up.’
‘Meets some guy at a party. Goes to bed with him. Because he’s a good-looking bloke.’
‘Don’t kid yourself. He’s just in the right place at the right time.’
‘Whatever. But maybe he’s got a bit more life in him than all the nerds she knows from medical school.’
‘You don’t know them at all.’
‘Nine months later – no, it’s only eight months, isn’t it? – she’s a single parent in Hackney. And – guess what? The little princess discovers she’s bitten off more than she can chew.’
‘Oh, fuck you.’
‘Well, fuck you too.’
From the next room there came a strange, high-pitched mewing sound – small, but unbroken and insistent and feline, like a distant buzz saw.
Megan and Kirk stared at each other.
And then they realised that their baby was crying.
‘It softens you, having a baby,’ Michael said to Jessica, as they watched Chloe stagger across the floor like a little drunk. ‘You realise – you can’t die. You have to be here for this little thing you created. But at the same time, nothing puts you in touch with your mortality like having a kid. The future belongs to her, not you. And you know – really know for the first time – that your life only has a limitéd time to run. So life has you hostage. You can’t die, but you know you will.’
Ch
loe was wearing a nappy and a T-shirt. She had a jam-stained DVD in her fist, which she inserted in a portable player that was sitting on the sofa. A big red bus called Beep came over shining green hills, batting its headlamps – its eyelids – and grinning its huge daffy grin. An old nursery rhyme – ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ – began to play. Chloe began to rock from side to side.
And Jessica thought, this is the world’s great divide – not between rich and poor, or old and young, but between those who had children, and those who did not.
‘They dance before they can walk,’ Michael said, shaking his head with wonder, watching his daughter dance. ‘Before they can crawl even. Isn’t that strange? Dancing is a basic human impulse. As fundamental as eating, or sleeping. This will to dance.’
There was a time when Jessica couldn’t stand to be around Michael. The knowledge that he had hurt Naoko, and put Chloe’s happiness at risk, infuriated her. But in her secret heart Jessica forgave her brother-in-law, even though she knew it wasn’t her place to forgive him.
She didn’t forgive him because she knew he had always liked her, or because he seemed to be trying so hard to make it up with Naoko, or even because there was a rough charm about him, which he always seemed to turn up to ten when Jessica was around. No, Jessica forgave Michael’s sins because he was so clearly in love with his daughter. A man who loved his child as much as Michael clearly loved Chloe couldn’t be all bad, could he?
Paolo and Naoko came into the room, carrying silver trays of tiny espresso cups and those hard little Italian biscuits that both the brothers were addicted to.
‘What’s that incredible smell?’ Paulo grimaced, waving a hand in front of his face.
They all looked at Chloe.
She was leaning against the sofa, oblivious to the foul stench emanating from her region, rocking back and forth to The Wheels on the Bus. She lifted her left leg off the ground as her nappy slowly began to fill, and continued her rocking dance.