Confusion. I stammered. 'Now? Why?'
I pictured her. Frances. Dark hair, nice figure. Efficient behind the bar, easy with the punters, wide smile, good teeth. The barmaid at Penn's.
'We have something to discuss,' she said.
'Look, I'm at lunch with clients.'
'You remember that night?'
I closed my eyes. That night at Penn's. Six months, a year ago? We'd been talking over the bar while she worked. Midnight, I the only customer left and she invited me out the back. There was a tiny flat upstairs, a studio. It was raining hard. We sat on a balcony, the rain ran off the veranda roof in streams, she said she didn't live here but stayed the night sometimes, we drank vodka and there was a dartboard on the back of the door. Late in the night I spilled a glass of vodka, felt it running down my chest as cold as rain. We played darts; we slept together on a futon on the floor. And I woke the next morning at dawn and ran away home . . .
I hadn't seen her since. She didn't work at Penn's any more. She rang once but I put her off. I had to keep it a secret from my girlfriend at the time, Jane.
'Frances,' I said. 'I can't see you now, I'm working.'
'Where are you?'
'I'm at the Waterfront Café. Busy. I'll ring you tomorrow.'
'I'm coming down,' she said.
'No, no, I'm working!'
'Be outside in ten minutes or I'll come in.'
I went back to the table, sweating. I picked up a glass and drank down some wine, felt my stomach cringe, the soft blow to my brain. George was looking at me. He'd hoped I would be good with Miranda. Why did I tell Frances where I was? Stupidity. Would she make a scene? Was she the kind of woman to make a scene? I would have to go outside in ten minutes, to head her off. I would pretend I wanted to smoke.
Miranda put her head back and laughed. Even her teeth looked plump, glistening there in the soft, cushiony mouth. Her cheeks were flushed. Only her eyes were hard: tiny black chips of rock.
I drained my glass. Miranda said, 'Do you like working with George?' Mark Venn focused his attention on me.
'George? George is great.'
George looked down at the table, faintly smiling.
Miranda and Mark glanced at each other.
I said, 'George has worked all over the world. London, New York. He's the man.' I looked out at the street.
Mark sat back, neutral. Miranda picked her teeth. The idea was to get me drunk, to see whether I would come out with some dreadful indiscretion that they could store away for future reference.
I checked my watch; ten minutes had passed. I considered sitting it out: surely Frances wouldn't dare walk in on a business lunch. I would be safe here, biding my time, trying not to drink too much. I wanted to help George, to protect him.
Miranda was saying something about wine. I looked beyond her and saw Frances's face in the reflection of the window: she was pushing open the glass door. She came in, shaking rain off herself, said something to a waiter and stood behind the bar, searching, her expression fixed. Miranda saw me looking. She turned. The waiter surged forward reflexively and took her empty plate.
I said, 'Can you excuse me for a minute, Miranda.'
'Again?' She smiled, not nicely.
'I won't be a second.'
As I disengaged myself from the seat, accidentally tugging the tablecloth, a knife clattered to the floor and I caught George's look of dismay, the faintest hint of reproach. I turned away.
Frances was holding an umbrella. Her hair was wet. She was wearing tight black clothes with a denim jacket over the top. Her expression was determined. I realised what my secretary had not been able to bring herself to say.
I looked back at the table. Sandy was standing, red-faced, acting out some story. There was a wave of loud guffawing.
I took Frances by the arm and hustled her to the stairs.
'We'll go up here,' I said.
She walked ahead of me. Numbly I watched her negotiate the stairs; she took each step with an effortful swivel of the hips, using the umbrella as a walking stick, stabbing it loudly on the wooden steps. I pushed her ahead into the empty upstairs bar. A kind of blurred panic had taken over; I wanted, urgently, to get to the point of what it was she wanted so I could hurry back downstairs, get away.
We sat down facing each other. I ordered a glass of wine. She asked for an iced water.
'We've got clients downstairs. I'll have to be quick.'
She seemed, once seated, to sink into a torpor. She gazed, blinking, at the harbour. Seagulls squawked along the balcony rail.
'So, when's it due?' I blurted.
She smiled, patted the swollen bulge of her stomach. 'Tonight,' she said.
'Tonight?'
She laughed.
I was angry. 'Look, Frances. I can't stay. I'm working. What do you want?'
'I need your help,' she said. I stared. The waiter put a glass in front of me and I picked it up and drank deeply, steeling myself against her, gathering my nerves.
'I'm having the baby tonight.'
'But how can you know that — don't you have to wait for it to . . . come on?' I couldn't hide my irritation.
She laid a hand on my arm. She spoke slowly, like a nurse soothing some frail hysteric. 'It's going to be induced. It's overdue. The doctor is going to bring it on. I go into the hospital tonight and he'll give me drugs to start the labour. I've hired myself an obstetrician. I borrowed the money . . .'
I took a breath. Asking: it was like jumping off the high diving board, the moment when you wished you hadn't made the leap, the plunge, the awful shock of impact . . . 'What's it got to do with me?'
'It's your baby,' she said.
I set down my glass with a crack. 'Oh no. No.'
She sat back, her hands resting on the tight bulge.
'From that one night?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, Christ. It's not possible. No.'
'I need your help,' she said again. 'A friend was going to come to the labour with me. She can't come. She's stuck in Wellington. And that leaves you.'
I closed my eyes. It was a dream. In a moment it would unravel and splinter and I would wake and blink and the dreadful weight would lift.
'It should be you at the birth,' she said. 'I mean, he is your baby.' She smoothed her shirt with a competent, blunt little hand.
'How do you know that? Why should I believe you?'
'Well, you can have a test done.'
I leaned my elbows on the table, hands on my temples. 'But to spring it on me now. To not tell me, not warn me. Not consult me. This is outrageous.' I rose.
'I'm sorry. I know I've gone about it all wrong. Please sit down.' She was flushed, pleading, plucking my sleeve. There were patches of sweat on her forehead. Her breathing was harsh. 'I was going to do it all on my own. I did ring you after that night but you weren't interested. I got the impression you had someone else. And I didn't have the heart to get rid of it.'
I sat, laughed. 'Oh, this is unbelievable. We've got clients sitting downstairs and here I am . . . this is too much.' I drained my glass, wiped my hands nervously on my jacket. 'You can't do this,' I said. 'You can't do this to a person. It's not right.'
She looked down. The parting in her hair was crooked. Her neck and shoulders were thinner, more delicate than I remembered, as if the outrageously jutting bulge in her midriff had consumed all her energy.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I wanted to have someone with me. I've got to be there at seven tonight. National Women's Hospital. It is a weird thought, isn't it, you turn up and they . . .'
I stood up. 'No, I'm sorry. I can't . . . do this. Do you want me to get you a cab?'
She looked down. She sighed and shivered, pushing the glass of iced water away. 'Yes.' She gathered up her umbrella and her bag and stood looking desolately out at the sea.
I told the barman to order a taxi. I walked her downstairs. At the door I took hold of her upper arm, pretending to steady her; I was afraid she would run into the restauran
t and screamingly denounce me. She was silent. The rain had come on again, falling thick through the laden afternoon air. She stood under her umbrella smiling at the ground. I felt the delicate chill of the rain on my scalp and remembered how I'd spilled that glass of vodka, how it had streamed cold down my chest inside my shirt, and she'd laughed and said, 'Smooth,' and I'd said, 'Clumsy hands.' And she'd told me about a philosophy paper she'd done where they'd discussed a kind of madness called 'alien hand', where people think they can't control their own hand. 'Their hand attacks them!' she said. 'It lies in wait and then boom, it's around their neck!' We played darts. Drunk, clowning around, I pretended to be attacked by my own hand. Outside, the cyclone beat against the windows. Rain streaming down the glass, rain on the harbour, on the winter sea . . .
'Wish me luck,' she said.
I slammed the taxi door.
She was a student. Arts, a BA. She was paying for her studies working in bars. She lived in a flat somewhere; also she'd said she came from Wellington . . .
I sat down facing Miranda. I was light-headed. My glass was empty again. Sandy hiccupped, giggled. She was making up for my failure with Miranda; she was being the life and soul.
'No. No. You told it wrong,' she was insisting. She got up — why did she find it necessary to stand, as if we were in a classroom? — and began some idiotic joke. She twined her fingers, acting something out. George was waving the menu and calling, with grotesque jollity, for dessert wine. Formality was breaking down; the rot was setting in. Miranda swapped seats. Now Mark Venn was studying me with his calculating eyes. Frances: had she called the baby a 'he'? Sudden misery. I shifted in my seat; the image of Frances was like a fly that I shook off, only to find it settling again, the exquisite pressure of it tickling my flaring nerves. I was hot. I fidgeted, couldn't keep still.
'How's it going?' The quiet Venn was tall, hard-faced, athletic, his dark hair slicked back off his forehead. There was something sly and knowing, almost intimate in the way he was looking at me. He sipped his coffee with a little finger coyly crooked. He was said to have an interest in — what was it, interior decorating? Furniture? George had said to me,
'Talk about his interests.'
'Still into antiques?' I said.
He launched immediately: bargains, the way to spot a fake, traps for the unwary. I bided my time; I was drinking now to cure the thrills of adrenalin that were running through me; I was trying to separate myself from my nerves. I was still afraid that Frances would come back. Every few seconds I glanced beyond Mark to the street door, expecting to see her drenched, outraged, avenging figure. Was it guilt I felt? But how could I be guilty, when I had done nothing, nothing wrong? I experienced a moment when something definitely loosened in me; I let go and drifted outwards — in other words, I was drunk. Mark and I sighed and grimaced at each other, and he said with sudden candour, flicking his eyes over at Miranda, 'She's only just got started, mate. She's on for a big night.'
On one side George, 'roaring with laughter', on the other Sandy covering her mouth with a look of fright, like a child about to be sick. Miranda lolled sleekly between them, cocktail in hand. Dave's hair was sticking up, his tie was loose. Miranda was taking an interest in him now. She picked a crumb off her jacket and eyed him, her head on one side. Out in the harbour a single ray of light lit up a patch of water. I could see birds wheeling above it, and a small boat making its way towards the wharf, trailing its foamy wake.
How could life begin so haphazardly; how could it depend on something so fleeting as spilled vodka, random talk, darts, the rain? 'It's too late to go now,' she'd said. 'If you go home now you'll drown,' and I pulled her against my sodden chest, and the wind crashed the open door against the veranda wall and a sign was blowing down the empty street, tumbling over and over. We slept with the door open. At dawn the rain was still coming down, and when I walked home in the early morning the street was strewn with wet leaves, sticks, paper, broken umbrellas. Strange night: I slept much of the next day, woke in the late afternoon and lay thinking about her. Strange, intense girl, sitting on the edge of the futon, a dart in her hand, drunk but lucid, telling me about 'alien hands' . . . 'Okay. Concentrate! More vodka? It goes like this: If you have alien hand syndrome, the part of the brain that gives the sensation of control over the hand is damaged. You think the hand is controlling itself. You never know when it'll go for you. Now. It's known that the electrical charges that precede all limb movements occur before you consciously decide to move your limb. So your "decision" to move your hand, your "free will", is actually an illusion. Your choice has already been made before, by your brain. People with this syndrome have lost the illusion of free will. So they're closer to the reality of how much we're responsible for our actions than the rest of us!'
George was standing over me. 'We're off,' he said, resolute, and named the pricey tapas bar Miranda had chosen. He helped her with her coat. Sandy swayed against Mark's arm, Dave sighed and stifled a burp.
Miranda stood under the roof talking on her phone. Serenely she turned her barrel-shaped calf this way and that, inspecting her witchy shoe. George danced out into the rain, opened the cab door for her and waited while she got in. She was still on the phone, not looking at him. He closed the door with an anxious nod.
In the cab she snapped her phone shut and said, 'That was Simon Grey from Billington Watts. He's in the bar at Mollie's.'
George winced. 'It's far more fun where we're going. Eh, Dave? Sandy?'
'Simon Grey's so boring,' Sandy said in a high voice.
'Oh, I don't know,' Miranda said languidly. 'Remember that night with Simon, Mark?'
'How could I forget?' Mark said.
'You know he had that . . . thing with the Law Society. What a mess.' George glanced at me. Two humiliated red spots had appeared on his cheeks. Normally he would never stoop to this: slander, currying favour.
'Yes, but he gives wonderful parties,' Miranda said sweetly.
There was a silence. George screwed up a receipt and threw it on the floor of the cab.
I turned on her. I'd had enough. 'Are you coming with us or do you want another cab?'
George jerked his head up. 'Well, it's up to Miranda, of course . . .'
Miranda gave me a long, amused look.
'Let's forget Simon Grey,' she said finally.
Mark laughed. His hard thigh pressed against mine.
We rode in silence through the rainy night. George threw some money at the driver, leapt out and rushed around to help Miranda out. She allowed herself to be led down into the hot, crowded subterranean bar. She sat sipping an elaborate drink, bending her head to George, who was talking non-stop in her ear. Mark popped tapas into his mouth and listened to Sandy, who seemed to want to climb into his lap. George paused and gave me a bleak, relieved smile. Dave was talking about cars; I pretended to listen. Someone handed me a glass of wine. I drank it, caring not. I drank another. There was a disturbance up at the bar, some pushing and shoving. A bouncer arrived. On a TV above the bar, Scott Roysmith was soundlessly reading the news. I had been drinking since one o'clock.
I was on my feet. I put my hand on George's shoulder.
'I'll be back, mate,' I slurred.
'Where are you off to?' Miranda's shiny little black eyes fastened on me. I leaned down.
'It's a secret,' I said in her ear.
She laughed. George smiled uncertainly, made apologetic shrugs. I kept my eyes on Miranda as I backed away. She didn't drop her gaze until I turned and pushed my way out into the street.
I got to a cab. 'National Women's,' I said.
'Where?'
I said it again. He got the idea. Grumbling, he started off. I got him to stop on the way. I came out with cans of beer in a plastic shopping bag and a meat pie, which I ate, to his disgust, in the back of the cab.
He let me off outside the main building. I strode into the foyer. At the information booth I couldn't think of the right word. 'Where women have babies,' I finally said.
Directed to Maternity I waited for the lift with an aged couple who shot doubtful glances at me and moved closer together. I rode up to Maternity and stood, getting my bearings, in the hall. A woman in a pink tracksuit walked out of a room. She asked me who I wanted.
'Frances,' I said. There was a long pause. Her eyes travelled down to my plastic shopping bag.
'Frances . . . Leigh.' I came out with it, triumphant.
Casting backward glances, she led me along a corridor. 'Wait here,' she said. There was a brief conversation. She came out. 'You can go in,' she said. She gave me a severe look and retreated not very far along the hall.
Frances was sitting on the bed wearing a hospital gown. She stood up awkwardly. The gown made the bulge in her front look even bigger.
I stood there, holding the shopping bag. I gestured at her stomach. 'You'll be glad to get it out,' I said.
She grinned. 'It's huge, isn't it?' Then she put her hand over her mouth. 'You came.'
'Course.' I set the bag down with a crash. 'It was touch and go, actually. What with the client lunch and all.' I had no idea what I was going to say next.
She went on grinning. She smoothed the front of her gown.
'Want to sit down?' she said.
'Yeah, actually. Thanks.' I fell onto the bed. She poured me a paper cup of water out of a plastic jug.
The woman in the pink tracksuit marched in. 'Doctor's here,' she said.
The doctor was tall, with thick black hair and a mild, shy expression. He was dressed in jeans and a jersey that had three woolly sheep embroidered on the chest.
I stood up, reeled, righted myself. I leaned against the high bed. He held out his hand.
'Simon Lampton,' he said.
His handshake, like his outfit, was gentle, non-threatening. Big softie, I thought. Woolly sheep. All rigged up not to scare the ladies.
He spoke soothingly. 'How are you, Frances? Good. Now, we're just going to insert the pessary, and that should get us under way. Labour probably won't get started until later. Tomorrow morning, even. So you can both try to get a good night's sleep.' He glanced at me, as if to say, and you need it.
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