Kansas in August

by Patrick Gale

  Oh Lord! The baby.

  The baby had wet himself, and the bed, and – it became alarmingly clear as Hilary rushed him with an oath or two to the bathroom – had not been so ungenerous as to stop there. The next ten minutes were rather like dealing with a blind-drunk lover or a loose-bowelled red setter; it was surprising what one could accomplish with gritted teeth, warm soapy water and a little initiative. It was only once Dan (who had indeed proved to be male) was back in his carrycot gurgling, sweetly (and expensively) powdered and freshly swaddled in an off-cut of an old towel, and once the sullied sheets had been flung into the twin-tub, that Hilary had time to wonder where he had learned to change a nappy so well.

  He did something about washing himself, then cleaned the feeding bottle with boiling water, which he presumed to take some kind of sterilizing effect, filled it with milk and returned to the bedroom with that and a glass of orange juice. The bottle arrived with seconds to spare as the gurgles were tingeing a pale shade of rage. Hilary held the baby in what seemed a comfortable position for both and put the bottle to the puckering lips.

  ‘There you are, Dan,’ he tried. Then, more daring, ‘that’s it … er … darling.’

  As one set of astonishingly small fingers rose to rest on his own around the bottle, he reflected that the feasting animal in his lap was not unappealing and, were it not for the horrendous responsibility, not much more bother than a fairly demanding guinea-pig. Dan pulled back from the teat, panting slightly, and stared hard at the face of his feeder. For all the appalling newness of the skin, his general mien was one of extreme old age. The puffy eyes were so brown as to verge on black. The few rings of hair were also dark. The features were Anglo-Saxon enough, but the skin was not. Caucasian babies seemed so pink and blotchy, their faces a pattern of unapproachable delicacy; this face looked as warm as it felt, somewhere between brown eggshell and digestive biscuit. The bottle was guided back to the mouth and the impromptu breakfast continued to a bubbling close.

  ‘There, Dan,’ said Hilary, wiping away a milky moustache with the edge of a towel, ‘All gone? Good boy. Who’s a good boy? There!’

  He stood with his precious bundle and walked, still naked, to pull open a kitchen curtain with his spare hand. The roof of the Sharmas’ garage down below was thick with snow and several inches of the stuff lay on the surrounding houses. Hedges were walls and parked cars Arctic tumuli. The traffic on North Pole Road would be swimming through a liquefying brown slurry by now. The grit-spreaders were bound to be on strike.

  ‘Look, Dan. Snow,’ he enthused, turning so that Dan could face the scene and feeling the baby’s warmth on his rapidly chilling chest. Dan seemed about to smile, but his lips wavered the wrong side of mirth and he appeared to be holding his breath. With the same mysterious (television acquired?) knowledge that had guided his hands in the bathroom, Hilary held him against a shoulder and gently patted his back. Head awobble, Dan let out a fruity belch, absurdly baritone in one of his size. ‘Who’s a good boy,’ praised Hilary, feeling terribly gifted of a sudden. ‘Clever darling! Any more down there? Eh?’

  He rubbed the little spine again and was rewarded with a flurry of hot vomit down his back and what sounded distinctly like a laugh. In the living room the Mother Superior bellowed ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ in a supportive fashion.

  He had taken the clinic’s address from the telephone directory and battled through the snow on foot. Apart from one accompanying a pregnant woman, he was the only man in the waiting room.

  ‘Have you an appointment?’

  ‘Well no, but I …’

  ‘Take a ticket from the dispenser and come forward when your number comes up,’ said the receptionist. ‘Thank you. Have you made an appointment, Madam?’

  Hilary tore a ticket from the dispenser; it was number 74. He glanced around him and eventually made out a dial in the shadows over the reception desk. It read 62. He heaved Dan’s carrycot over to the payphone and pulled out a coin. Then he saw that no wire joined the handset to the machine. He returned to the queue for the receptionist. She seemed not to recognize him.

  ‘Yes? Have you got an appointment?’

  ‘No, but I …’

  ‘Take a ticket from …’

  ‘I have, but my number won’t come up for ages and I’m going to be late for work. I’m a teacher, you see.’

  Several women looked up from their dog-eared magazines.

  ‘Couldn’t you ‘phone the school?’

  ‘It’s been vandalized.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. And there weren’t any kiosks outside.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to come back tomorrow. I can fit you in at five.’

  ‘I have to work then too,’ he lied. ‘It’s really very urgent.’

  ‘Perhaps your wife, then …’

  ‘I’m not married.’

  More dog-eared looks. Luckily Daniel was asleep. If he lets the side down by crying, thought Hilary, I’ll join in.

  ‘I’ll just deal with this lady. Could you step aside a moment?’ Hilary stepped aside as she turned her dully inquiring gaze on the woman behind him. The woman had made an appointment and walked with an air of lofty wisdom straight through. The receptionist turned back to him. She lowered her voice and confided, without a smile,

  ‘If you go through door number seven and wait, Matron will see you next.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, with a relieved smile. ‘Thanks a lot.’ He started forward but she checked him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leave a fiver in the drawer.’

  The room was windowless. There was a desk, an examination bed and two chairs. Leaving the carrycot on the bed, he sat on a chair, pulled out his wallet and opened the drawer. A five pound note and a few pound coins – he assumed from the previous queue-jumpers – lay there already. Suddenly indignant, he shut the drawer and replaced his money.

  He waited in the fluorescent light and rehearsed the meeting to come. He would explain how and where he had found the baby. She would want to know what Dan had had to eat and whether he seemed to have suffered from his exposure. He would probably have to sign something and then he could walk out a free man and catch the bus to school. There was always the possibility that he would have to go to the police to make a statement. Abandoning a child was almost certainly a crime, after all. He hoped that a signature for Matron would suffice their needs. Figures of authority invariably had him tongue-tied with unspecific guilt.

  Matron was nothing if not authoritative. She breezed in and filled the chair he had vacated. He sat across the desk from her.

  ‘Good morning, Mr … ?’

  ‘Metcalfe.’

  ‘Mr Metcalfe. And what seems to be the matter? Is it your wife?’

  ‘No. Er …’

  She followed Hilary’s gaze to the bed and the carrycot.

  ‘Ah. Fine,’ she said and pulled out a form from a folder. ‘We haven’t seen you before, have we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just a few details then.’ She spoke slowly as she wrote in block capitals, ‘M.E.T.C.A.L.F.E. First name?’

  ‘Hilary.’

  ‘No. Your name.’

  ‘As I said, Hilary.’

  ‘Unusual in a man,’ she continued, unperturbed. ‘H.I.L.A.R.Y. Age?’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘Two. Five. NHS number?’ He told her. ‘And address?’ He told her this also. ‘Fine.’ She wrote, then looked up. ‘Now the child. Sex?’

  ‘He’s a boy.’

  ‘Male. Age?’

  ‘I couldn’t say exactly.’

  ‘Well roughly, then.’

  Her tone was impatient. He guessed in a wild effort to please her. Unspecifically guilty.

  ‘Five weeks?’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Well …’ He tried to laugh. She would relax and then he could explain everything. ‘Well, I’ve been calling him Dan after a guinea-pig I once had.’ She didn’t laugh.

  ‘Christened Dan
or Daniel?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think he’s been christened.’

  ‘You don’t seem very sure about your child, Mr Metcalfe.’

  ‘Actually, he’s not mine; I found him last night. I say I don’t think he’s been christened because I get the feeling that his parents, well one of his parents was a Hindu or a Muslim.’ She looked up as if to say, ‘And I’m the Spirit of Bali Ha’i.’ Faltering, he went on. ‘I simply brought him … I mean … I thought.’

  ‘You thought you could just dump him on us and we’d shove him in a state home pending adoption and that would be that, eh?’

  ‘No. Look, you really don’t seem …’

  Matron clicked the cap back onto her pen. ‘Well, I hate to disappoint you, Mr Metcalfe, but that’s not the way we work. Leave him on your doorstep, did she?’

  ‘I found him in a subway off Wood Lane, as a matter of fact,’ he said, the previous night sounding increasingly unlikely.

  ‘Mr Metcalfe. Hilary.’ She gave a horrible simper which he took for a professional reassurance tactic. ‘You can trust me. We needn’t know her name. She obviously can’t look after Dan and hoped that you could. Are you unemployed?’

  ‘No. I teach at the Scrubbs Secondary.’

  ‘Pity. If you were on supplementary benefit we could have found you a daily minder. Meanwhile you must read this and this to make sure you feed and dress the poor mite properly – no skimmed milk and so forth – and if you fill out this AP57 we can set the ball rolling for an adoption. It won’t be quick, mind.’

  ‘But this is absurd. Don’t you understand? It, I mean, he isn’t my baby.’

  ‘Then why did you give it a name?’

  ‘I couldn’t call him nothing.’

  ‘Some manage. We’ve had little girls who think their name is “Oi” or “You”. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you found a child ready equipped with carrycot, nappies, bottle and baby-gro, gave it a name and didn’t bother to report your discovery to the police?’

  ‘I didn’t find him until last night.’

  ‘Mr Metcalfe,’ she sighed, ‘we have a lot of patients waiting. I’ll take Dan through for weighing and a check-up, then you must bring him back in a fortnight. Vaccination details are in that red pamphlet I’ve given you.’ She rose and carried Dan to the door. He started to cry and she stopped and reached a hand into his bedding. ‘When did you last change him?’

  ‘Breakfast. Eight o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll get them done again for you now. These nappies are far too large, by the way. They’ll chafe his thighs. If you’re such a busy man, buy some disposables. Just a matter of interest,’ she added. ‘What have you been feeding him?’

  ‘Cow’s milk,’ said Hilary.

  ‘And he was sick?’

  ‘Yes. Very.’

  ‘Of course he was. It must have been a shock after mother’s own. We’ll give you enough formula for a day or two, but then you’ll have to get in your own supplies.’

  She opened the door and Hilary rose with thoughts of flight. ‘Don’t run away,’ she called over her shoulder so that all the waiting room could hear. ‘Abandoning a child is an offence against decency, Mr Metcalfe.’

  As the door swung behind her, Dan mouthed a sound through his tears, one tiny fist grappling the air above his pillow. It sounded suspiciously like ‘Dada’. Hilary sank back on his chair. The walls of Fate seemed to be closing in.

  Two and a half hours later he was back at his desk. Beside him Dan was breathing heavily from the carrycot as he slept off his lunchtime feed. Hilary had stopped at a working telephone on the way home to call school and excuse himself from morning classes. Henry would write him an official-looking note if he asked her sweetly enough.

  For the present, Dan would seem to be his responsibility. He had ceased fuming at the matron’s aggressive misunderstanding; he was a coward and there an end. The burden was not so onerous. He could buy him food, disposable nappies and a few clothes, marking them down to rare charity. There was a crêche where he could leave the dear boy beside the sick-room at school. Colleagues might look askance, but that had never bothered him greatly. Henry had left a message on his answering machine saying she would drop by that evening. If there were any problem about leaving so new a child at the crêche, he could get her to sign some doctorly form to help find him a day nurse.

  The door-bell rang. His landlady, Mrs Sharma, stood there, her nylon wraps vivid against the grey of melting snow. Her hands were pressed together in greeting. Hilary had read a teach-oneself course on Understanding Your Hindu Neighbours; he pressed his hands together also.

  ‘Namaskaras Shrimati Sharma,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Hello, Hilary,’ she replied. Beneath her sari he could see the toes of her Wellington boots. ‘Forgive me for intruding like this.’

  ‘Not at all. Come in.’

  She hesitated, seeming embarrassed. ‘Well, you see …’ Her eyes kept flicking to her left.

  ‘No, honestly. I’m not busy. Come in out of the cold.’ He stood back to welcome her, but she stayed put.

  ‘I saw the baby,’ she said at last and Hilary felt himself flush.

  ‘Well, yes. Isn’t it extraordinary?’ was all he could find to say.

  ‘I thought perhaps …’ She reached out to her left and wheeled a cot into the doorway. It was almost new and filled with baby clothes and nursery equipment. She seemed painfully shy about presenting him with the things. ‘These are all Sumitra’s old clothes and so on. We have no use for them now, of course, and I thought …’

  ‘That’s terribly kind of you. He’s not really mine, you know, I …’

  ‘Yes, I guessed. You are very good to take him in.’

  ‘Well, I daresay he won’t be with me for long. I should find him a proper home.’

  ‘I’m sure your home is very proper.’

  ‘Well. I dunno.’ Hilary laughed. Mrs Sharma was a grave woman. Her knowledge of English was as near perfect as that of her garrulous husband, who had explained this with a proud reference to her superior education, yet she was habitually restrained. However, on the first day of the term when her daughter Sumitra had joined one of his classes, she had smiled very slightly, said how glad she was that he would be teaching her child and asked him to call her Shanti. He did his best, but first-name terms were awkward to sustain with one so reserved. It was clear from their refusal to let Sumitra go to swimming or drama classes, and their insistence that she swelter through gym lessons in a thick, chaste tracksuit, that their Hinduism was staunchly orthodox.

  ‘Would you like to come upstairs and see him?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh. Could I?’ She smiled for the second time in their acquaintance. ‘Only if it is no bother,’ she went on, and followed him up the musty stairs to the flat.

  Dan stirred as they approached the cot, and yawned. Hilary reached in and lifted him out. The baby was only just old enough to keep his neck straight, and his huge head wobbled as he stared, drooling, at Mrs Sharma. Instead of cooing, or immediately holding out her hands to take him, she let out a sharp cry and bit the back of her hand to suppress the sound. Her eyes were round with surprise. Slowly she lowered her hand, her lower lip trembling. She murmured something in Gujurati and seemed about to smile again.

  ‘He is perfect,’ she said, turning her face up to Hilary’s but keeping her eyes on the child.

  ‘Would you like to hold him?’

  He held Dan out to her. She said nothing but reached out and took him closely in her arms. Dan lay breathing like a sleeper with a head cold and stared at her hard.

  ‘He’s studying my tilah,’ she said. ‘He wants to know about my third eye.’ She reached up a hand and touched the red circle on her brow with a long-nailed forefinger, then, slowly slowly she brought the finger down to touch his forehead. Then she laughed, truly laughed and held him against her shoulder. Rocking slowly from one foot to the other she whispered, ‘Charulata. Namaskaras charulata.’ Within seconds Dan was asleep a
gain.

  ‘He knows the real thing when he finds it,’ said Hilary, feeling a pang of jealousy at her sureness of touch. She either ignored this or didn’t hear, and laid the baby back in the carrycot.

  ‘How will you find time to look after him?’ she asked softly.

  ‘There’s a crêche at school. It’s only for a few days – just until they can arrange an adoption.’

  ‘But he’s a charulata – you would say a godsend. Every day is important with an honoured guest.’

  ‘Well, that’s as maybe, but I have to work. He seems to sleep most of the time anyway and I could pop in to see him between classes.’

  ‘There would be so many fearful noises. There would be other, older children. He would not sleep.’ Hilary made a noise of helplessness and Mrs Sharma went on, lowering her deep eyes in humility. ‘Shri Metcalfe. Hilary. Would you let me look after him? I have so little to do. Bharat deals with all the customers and his cousin helps him. All I have to do is wash the floor at night and cook. If you did not mind me sitting here, I could come up with my sewing while you were out at school and watch over him.’

  ‘But that would be a dreadful imposition.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I mean you couldn’t possibly. Your own children … er … cooking. I really couldn’t let …’

  ‘I have nothing to do.’ Her brown gaze, intensified by the carmine dot, was full upon him. ‘After puja, I feed my family, then Bharat opens shop and Sumitra runs off to school. Cooking for the day never takes more than one hour. Otherwise I wash the floor at six and we go to the Gujurati Centre for prayers at seven. I listen to the radio. I sew. I have asked Bharat many times, but he will not let me work in the shop.’