by Helen Harris
She remembered to look up at Smita and Jeremy and murmured, “He’s adorable. Oh well done, darlings.”
They beamed back, in unison Sylvia saw as they rarely were. Jeremy was already all gentle, soppy, caring gestures, as he usually was in fact only more so – and sweaty, she noticed, too – and Smita, even Smita seemed somewhat softened by the experience she had just been through; beneath her perfect make up she was less sharp, less diamond hard. For a rare moment, Sylvia could actually imagine that they might make each other happy after all. The baby would bring life to their unconvincing marriage and they would flourish as a family the way they had never really appeared to as a couple.
But this idea flashed through Sylvia’s mind in seconds and she did not want to let it distract her from her grandson for even a moment. She looked down at him again, relishing him, drawing out the moment until Smita asked her expectantly, “Well, Sylvia, who do you think he looks like?”
Sylvia answered cautiously. “It’s hard to say when they’re so small, isn’t it? Who do you two think he takes after?”
Jeremy looked hesitatingly at Smita who answered promptly, “Oh, I think my side, definitely. Jeremy’s not sure.”
“I couldn’t say,” Sylvia said, she hoped diplomatically. “But whoever he takes after, he is absolutely beautiful.” Again, not wanting to say the wrong thing and not sure either how a brown-skinned baby could, frankly, take after Jeremy’s side, Sylvia changed the subject. “Tell me, have you thought about names?”
“No,” said Jeremy.
“Yes,” said Smita.
They all three laughed and Sylvia said hastily, “None of my business, I know.”
Maybe disturbed by the sudden laughter in the quiet room, the baby stirred in Sylvia’s arms and let out the beginning of a small wail. Sylvia made to hand him over to Smita but she waved him away.
“Put him back in the cot please Sylvia,” she said languidly. “I’m far too exhausted to be holding him constantly. And I want to begin as I mean to go on; not picking him up and cuddling him and fussing over him all the time so he just cries out for more.” She glanced warningly at Jeremy who looked ready to reach out and take his small son and fuss over him for all he was worth.
Obediently but regretfully, Sylvia returned the baby to his cot, surreptitiously caressing him as she covered him up. Wasn’t it funny; thirty years ago she was sure she would have acted exactly like Smita but today she yearned to hold onto the baby and to be his warm source of comfort and reassurance.
Abandoned between the cold hospital sheets, the baby’s small wail rose to a frank scream. Jeremy hung over the side of the cot, looking thwarted but apparently not daring to pick him up.
Deliberately turning her face away from the cot, Smita said to Sylvia, “We have discussed names, obviously. But it’s difficult to reach a decision when there are two traditions to be taken into account.”
“Plus,” Jeremy interrupted, grinning, “up until last night we were convinced we were having a girl.”
“Were you?” Sylvia exclaimed. “Really? Why, I was absolutely sure –” she caught sight of Smita’s frown and broke off. “Who cares my dears, so long as he’s healthy.”
“Absolutely,” Jeremy agreed. Sylvia noticed he was sneakily stroking the baby with a single finger.
“Anyway, about the name,” Smita went on. “We’ll have to wait until my mother gets here; she’s been taking advice.”
Sylvia didn’t like to ask from whom. She assumed it must be a priest at Prem and Naisha’s temple and she felt that in any case the topic was probably best left alone. Besides, she tested herself; how much did she actually care what they called the baby? To her surprise, she cared very little. She didn’t seem to have any sentimental wish for him to be called after Roger or to bear any of the traditional family names. In fact she realized she was actually hoping the baby would have a brand-new name, a name which no-one in their family had ever had before, just to underline what an exciting brand-new person he was. So long as she could pronounce it of course. She thought briefly of Heather Bailey with her far away Amharic-speaking grandchildren with whom she could barely communicate. It was true; you never knew how your children would take their revenge.
Benevolently, and raising her voice slightly above the baby’s crying, Sylvia said, “Honestly dears, whatever you come up with is fine by me. I won’t be sticking my oar in.”
Smita shifted uncomfortably in bed, whether at the implied comparison with her own mother or whether because she really was uncomfortable, Sylvia couldn’t tell.
“Now tell me Smita dear,” she asked kindly. “How are you?”
Smita shot Sylvia a dark warning look. Sylvia supposed she wanted to ward off any overly intimate questions about the birth; private parts made public, stitches, tears, that sort of thing. But, goodness, Sylvia would never have dreamt of asking about all that. She ploughed on, “You must take it easy as much as you can until you have got your strength back.”
“Jeremy and my mother will take good care of me.” Smita smiled frostily. “Don’t you worry Sylvia.” She turned to Jeremy and said, “Maybe someone could bring your mother a cup of tea?”
Sylvia sat with her tea, relegated to the status of visitor, drank and tried not to feel excluded. It was only natural that Smita should want to have her own mother to help. Sylvia was careful not to outstay her welcome especially when the baby’s screaming grew so anguished that Jeremy had to lift him out of the cot and pass him to Smita and they began to bicker over whether or not he needed to be fed.
As she left, Sylvia reminded herself how secondary her concerns were. The little boy, her grandson, had come to rescue her from drowning. She had – as of this morning – a new and important role, whatever Smita said or did. From now on, she must drink less gin and take more healthy exercise. She had a vital task ahead of her; to be a superlative grandmother, to make up for the parents’ shortcomings and she was going to do it her own way and nobody else’s. Her world was so much more infinitely interesting with this little boy in it that she sailed beaming down in the upholstered lift, sailed out into the street, sailed onto the bus and sailed beaming all the way back to Overmore Gardens where she rang Ruth Rosenkranz’s bell to share her marvellous news.
“That is your mother all over,” Smita complained to Jeremy later. She was feeling tired to the point of tears and, as usual, Sylvia’s visit had been the last straw. “Either knock and wait or come in without knocking. Why do both? It’s so typical. She knocks so you think she’s being considerate but then she comes in anyway. She is so aggravating. What if I had been breastfeeding?”
Jeremy, looking haggard and apparently distracted by the perfection of his baby son’s fingernails, answered vaguely as he had so many times before, “She means no harm, Smi.”
“Marvellous!” Smita snapped. “She means no harm but she just does it anyway; barges in, tra-la-la, and causes trouble left, right and centre. At least my mother, whatever nonsense she inflicts on us, you know she has thought about it beforehand, planned it, worked it all out and she believes what she is doing is right even if it’s nothing of the sort. Your mother –” she broke off and gestured in exasperation at a large cardboard box in the corner. “I mean, what about her present? What sort of a weird outlandish thing is that?”
Jeremy considered his mother’s gift for a moment: a large, very brightly painted mobile of Indian figures twirling amid moons and stars and elephants and tigers. Sylvia had explained proudly that the two largest figures were the Indian deities, Rama and Sita. “I think it’s rather quaint,” he said carefully.
“Quaint!” Smita exclaimed crossly. “It may well be quaint but is it safe? Is it hygienic? Where was it made exactly? For all we know, there is lead paint on those figures. And look at the feathers on the elephants’ headdresses – where did they come from? I mean, doesn’t she think? It’s enough to give our little boy an allergy just looking at it.”
That evening, Sylvia’s phone rang particu
larly shrilly and it was Naisha.
“I had to ring and celebrate with you, Sylvia dear,” she exclaimed. “Congratulations to both of us, don’t you think? He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?”
Sylvia felt conscience-stricken that she hadn’t thought of ringing Naisha. She had always assumed that where other people had a heart, Naisha had a splendid gleaming calculator which worked out her every move. Her daughter had inherited the same calculator. Everything Naisha did or said was decided by a profit motive, either material profit or some other sort of tangible gain. Any altruistic motives in that household Sylvia attributed only to Prem, poor, grey, hen-pecked Prem with his never-ending devotions, his prayer corner and his long drawn-out visits to the temple.
But here was Naisha proving her culpably wrong. Why hadn’t she thought of lifting the phone and congratulating Naisha? She knew why (apart from her antipathy towards Naisha); it was because she was not sure what to say and in a stupidly English way, she had said nothing at all. Which was undoubtedly the wrong thing.
Naisha went on boldly. “He has the best features of both parents, don’t you think? The mouth and the chin are definitely Jeremy’s, wouldn’t you say, but the eyes, the eyes are Smita’s. For sure. Of course it’s probably far too early to tell anything, isn’t it? They change so much in the first few weeks. But the temperament; I think you can see the temperament already quite clearly in the first few hours, don’t you? And our little darling has the temperament of his maternal grandfather, of that I am sure. He lies there so calmly and sweetly, such a serene expression on his dear little face. Prem is beside himself with happiness. He has gone off to the temple just now.”
An unpleasant thought crossed Sylvia’s mind to the effect that Prem would doubtless have gone off to the temple if he had been beside himself with sorrow too. She tuttingly suppressed it and tried her best to focus on Naisha’s deluge of presumptious pronouncements about the baby. In fact, their images of him were not that far apart; where Sylvia had seen the epitome of an Eastern sage, Naisha had seen her own local version, saintly Prem. In the distance, Sylvia thought she heard for a moment a bellow of indignation from Roger. But it faded. Besides, Naisha was continuing: “So lovely to be linked in this way, Sylvia dear,” she was saying graciously. “I hope you share my feelings.”
At this, Sylvia’s shame was complete for hadn’t Naisha behaved impeccably, said and done exactly the right thing while she, Sylvia, was still debating whether or not to send a card?
She responded to Naisha’s question rather more firmly than she actually felt. “Absolutely,” she agreed. “Absolutely.”
Naisha clucked. “We are truly blessed,” she sighed happily. “I am only so sorry that poor Roger did not live to see this day.” Then, disconcertingly briskly, she added, “Well, must rush. Lots of phone calls to make. Bye Sylvia dear. Looking forward to seeing you at the naming ceremony.”
Sylvia sat perfectly still in her sitting room for about an hour after Naisha’s phone call. Outside in the square, the sun was starting to set and the dark red brick mansions of Overmore Gardens seemed to be glowing. So many powerful emotions were surging through her, she feared that if she moved too suddenly, they might overflow and she might start to weep or howl or laugh hysterically like a mad woman. She needed to pull herself together if she was not to have another slip-up.
Her first act of responsibility towards her grandson was to eat a sensible supper. She went into the kitchen which, she noticed, was getting into rather a state. The truth was that, all those years abroad, she had always had someone to help her keep the kitchen tidy. But now, since that frightful business with the Romanian cleaner whom she had accused of stealing things, she had nobody. The thing was that, later on, she had found all the different things which she had thought were stolen. She had managed in her muddledom to misplace them but she had never confessed to Jeremy and Smita. Now she felt too guilty to hire another cleaner.
But there was one cupboard which was beautifully tidy: at the end of the kitchen there was an empty unit which she had been filling up over the past few weeks with supplies of baby formula, bottles, a sterilizing machine and jars and jars of baby food. She opened the cupboard and gloated over her prudent supplies. Straight away, she began to feel much better.
For days after the birth, Sylvia stayed in a state of elation, as if some parallel hormonal event were happening in her own body. She rang Jeremy so many times on his mobile the first two days that he ended up snapping at her. Of course, Naisha had now arrived and taken over; he had his mother-in-law to deal with too. But Sylvia still could not resist ringing; she had to know every development, every last little detail. She could think of nothing but the baby. When Smita went home from hospital – far too early in Sylvia’s opinion, after barely two days – Sylvia could ring their home number freely since the only person who answered was Naisha and she loved to broadcast the latest details from her privileged position.
“He is feeding well,” she reported excitedly. “Sleeping so-so. He cries a lot; he obviously needs to exercise his lungs.” She chuckled. “And he has such strong lungs, Sylvia dear.”
At night, Sylvia woke every two or three hours as if she herself had a newborn baby to feed. She imagined the night-time scene in Jeremy and Smita’s apartment on the other side of London; the high-pitched cry rising in the darkness, Smita climbing wearily out of bed, taking the baby out of the bedroom so as not to disturb Jeremy and settling with him at her breast in the big front room, Naisha bringing her daughter tea and snacks.
Sylvia was outraged when she discovered, on her first visit to their flat, that Smita was not breastfeeding the baby at all. It wasn’t that she couldn’t (like Nikki Palmer, say, who had no milk.) She was flatly refusing to; she said she found it disgusting and degrading and, to Sylvia’s chagrin, Naisha took her side, saying the baby got a much more nutritious feed from the bottle anyway. The only one who seemed upset by this development was Jeremy but it was already clear that nobody was listening to him.
Sylvia sat with the little boy on her lap – he still had no name, they were still arguing – and she wished she could hire a wet nurse for him like in the olden days. It was only on her way home that a huge advantage occurred to her; if the baby was bottle-fed, he wasn’t dependent on his mother, was he? He could be anywhere, with anyone competent to feed him. As soon as she got home, she washed her hands and got out the sterilizer. All evening, she practised sterilizing bottles and making up the formula until she had it to a T. It came back to her surprisingly quickly.
Naisha was staying down in London for ten days. Sylvia knew she would not get a look in until Naisha had gone. But once she was, she would prevail on Smita, who was naturally exhausted, to let her take the baby for a night or two so Smita could sleep through. She knew it was a long shot but she was determined.
In the meantime, she tried to keep her feet on the ground in her giddy sleepless state by being a good neighbour to Ruth Rosenkranz, wheeling her out into the garden square and sitting there with her through the lovely Indian summer afternoons with a flask of iced tea and generations of baby stories.
Ruth kept promising that her baby brother would come to Sunday lunch again, after he had cancelled so suddenly the last time. Although Sylvia was, frankly, not that interested in the baby brother, she had found his excuse intriguing; he was marooned on the Isle of Wight. Sylvia wondered how on earth anyone could manage to be marooned on the Isle of Wight when there were ferries steaming to and fro to Southampton so regularly. She wondered why Ruth didn’t seem to realize that the excuse must be a smokescreen. Was there some sibling difficulty between them; Ruth much keener on keeping things going than Siggy? But she spoke of him so dotingly, her adored baby brother whom, given their age difference and other circumstances, she had virtually brought up herself. Surely he must appreciate and adore his big sister too? Or maybe he found her bossy, intrusive, perhaps judgemental about the life he led?
One afternoon, she wrote a card to her sister C
ynthia, informing her of the baby’s safe arrival and explaining that, now he had arrived, so much earlier than expected, she would unfortunately have to postpone her planned September visit to Lewes. “PS,” she added, “no name as yet!”
Then Jeremy called her, the first time he had done so since the day of the birth, and told her that they had finally chosen a name. “We’re calling him Anand,” he announced proudly. “It means happiness.”
The birth of his son caused Jeremy to relive his childhood in an unexpectedly vivid way. For years he had systematically avoided thinking about it. But now all sorts of memories came crowding back, unwelcome, unhappy, forcing him to experience all over again as an adult episodes which he had already suffered through uncomprehendingly as a child.
He had anticipated nothing but joy from Anand’s arrival – ok, hard work and broken nights – but basically a life-changing happiness, like everyone said. He felt fortunate to become a father at a time when fathers were encouraged to take part in their children’s upbringing; when they were expected to change nappies and push prams and show emotion. Jeremy intended to do all those things and he was looking forward to it no end. He was utterly unprepared for the crush of distressing memories which sometimes threatened to overwhelm him in the first few months of his little boy’s life. He knew that new mothers could get post-natal depression (and Smita seemed to for a while). But there was nothing comparable mentioned in the books about new fathers. Jeremy wasn’t depressed exactly; most of the time he was perfectly happy. Yet as he sat cradling Anand in his arms, frequently, instead of gazing down at him, he found himself contemplating long-forgotten scenes of misery from his own childhood which seemed to have returned to haunt him. He would hold his baby closer as if it were himself he was trying to protect.
He hated having to go to work and being separated from Anand five days a week. He was jealous of Smita for having him to herself all day and disapproving that she didn’t seem to enjoy it more. At the weekend, he would do everything he could to have Anand to himself. He would take him out early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to let Smita sleep in. As he pushed him in his pram through the deserted misty streets, Jeremy would gaze down at the little chap, snug in his hat and hood and covers; he would imagine Anand’s future childhood and compare it inevitably with his own. If there was one thing he wanted for Anand at this stage, it was that he should look back on his childhood with greater happiness than Jeremy looked back on his.