Love of Fat Men

by Helen Dunmore

  She was pouring her second cup of coffee from the flask when the dull peace was shattered. Picnic plates slid about, cardigans twitched, disapproving faces turned, as mean as pennies. Sheena felt a small anticipatory brightening. She liked a bit of life. But a quick glance settled her back on the rustic bench, disappointed. It was just a woman screeching, bent like a bat over her child. A huge woman with a frizz of orange hair on top of her head. Not for this one the hissed threats in the ear, the bribes of sweeties, the furtive slap. She ranted over the child, the flesh of her big upper arms jouncing as she wagged a little pair of knickers under the child’s nose. Ridiculous looking nylon things. How could the child’s skin breathe?

  The woman shoved her little girl this way and that. Fair play to her, Sheena could see stains on the knickers, but it was nothing much for God’s sake. What did the woman expect with queues for the toilets a mile long? Lucky that she herself had boys. They had gone behind a tree with no trouble.

  The little girl stood without crying. She had a meagre bit of hair plaited up so tight it pulled her eyes sideways. And a white frock on with tats of ribbon hanging off it. She had even put white sandals on the child. What on earth did she expect? How could a child keep herself clean in that lot?

  The child lurched, then caught her footing. A man near by half-rose from his picnic seat, looked around for support, settled himself again as if he’d had a bit of cramp. The woman was no fool, Sheena thought. You could not say she was hitting the child. Hard to tell how old the little girl was. One of those queer-faced little souls you see the teacher being kind to. The mother was packed into her sleeveless dress with her great arms chafing the armholes. She had lovely ankles though. A lot of fat people do, thought Sheena. And those neat little baby hands and feet.

  Now the woman was tearing at the sash and the fiddly little buttons up the back of the child’s dress. The child struggled, twisting away and trying to hold her skirt down over her thighs. Sheena looked round for Jamie and Michael. They were head-down, leaning over the bridge rail, their bare brown legs straining. Michael had got a stick from somewhere. They had noticed nothing. The mother got hold of the little girl’s joined fists and held them out of the way while she pulled off the dress with her other hand. Now the child hung naked from her mother’s grip, in her fancy white socks and sandals. The mother brandished the skinny, cleft little body. Not a mark on her. No, she’s no fool, thought Sheena.

  ‘I can never take you anywhere,’ said the woman hoarsely, and shoved the child away from her.

  The woman searched for a patch of grass which hadn’t been beaten to dust. She spread out the dress. She stroked out the folds so that the fabric would not crease. She rolled the sash and tucked it in at the waist. Her tight permed curls shook a little. She’s crying, poor bitch, thought Sheena. Then the woman slid the folded dress into a carrier bag, and laid it on top of her rigid plastic shopper.

  Meanwhile the little girl had forgotten her mother and was squatting like a frog, absorbed, teasing a stag beetle. The beetle couldn’t get past the barrier of her white sandals. She flicked it with her middle finger so that it fell on its back with its legs waving and its underparts exposed. The man at the next table to Sheena leaned over and said, ‘Haven’t seen one of those for years.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Stag beetles. Funny how you don’t see them. We used to set up fights with ’em when we were kids.’

  The woman had unfolded a red nylon all-in-one splash suit, like the ones the boys used to have. It creaked and rustled unpleasantly as she shook it out. Sheena hadn’t known they made them up to such a big size. How old was the kid – six, seven? Without warning, the woman swooped on her daughter from behind and picked her up, holding her under the armpits. The little girl let her body go limp. Face averted, she watched the stag beetle run away. The woman stretched the tight cuffs of the splash suit over the sandals, then crammed the rest of the child’s body into the red nylon, and zipped it up to the chin. She took the child’s hand, picked up her shopper and set off towards the sea-lions’ enclosure, walking fast. The splash suit crackled as the child hurried to keep up.

  Sheena had had enough of the zoo. When she called them, her boys set up a bellow ten times louder than any sound the little girl had made. Reminding them of the ice-cream van just inside the zoo gates, she slotted each child’s arms through his rucksack straps, picked up the picnic case and walked off without looking back at her sons. Experience had shown her that this was the way to get them to follow her. At the path fork she glanced back to be sure they had noticed which direction she took. They were scuffling along, heads together, Jamie punching Michael on the upper arm in a way which would have brought roars for sympathy if she’d been there.

  Near the entrance Sheena and the boys drew together while Sheena got out her change and told them how much they could spend. They didn’t argue. They were good like that, Sheena thought. She watched Michael wait to see what Jamie was going to have, so that he could choose the same. She watched Jamie hanging back from the choice, prolonging the round expectant stare on his brother’s face. Just as they were moving towards the turnstile, Michael pulled at Sheena’s arm.

  ‘What’s all those people there, Mum?’

  She saw a row of backs, clustering around a cage. More people were drifting up, curious, joining the little crowd. Jamie was over there at once. He eeled through to the front and then out again, shouting to Sheena and Michael, ‘Quick, come over here! The monkey’s got a baby!’

  Sheena found space at the side of the enclosure. There was a barrier of shrubs in front of the cage-bars, and a big red-lettered DANGER sign. She grasped Michael’s hand.

  ‘It’s not a monkey, Michael, it’s an orang-utan,’ she said. ‘Mind and stay by me.’

  No point telling Jamie. He was already talking to a man with binoculars. He’d come back and tell them all about it. Yes, there was a baby. It clung to its mother’s chest, looking round at the crowd. The mother with her long arms reached through the bar and nipped off a tender tip of green and put it in her mouth. Sheena moved back a step.

  The little monkey was learning to climb. First he scrambled all over his mother as she gazed out and away from him. But she must have known where he was all the time, because when he slipped she’d pluck him back to her shoulder without even glancing at him. He muddled himself up in his own limbs and came to a standstill halfway up the cage bars. Smooth and sure, her arm found him. He scuttled across the front of her body into the angle of her chest and her arm. Sheena saw her nipples. Poor creature, fancy having to do it all out here, with everyone staring. She wondered where the baby had been born. Not in the cage, in front of a crowd, surely.

  The baby was getting bolder. Sheena could feel the tension in Michael’s body as he willed the baby up the bars. It was climbing well now. The little orang-utan rolled out its arm for the next hand-hold, its body a small echo of the mother’s. The baby was high now, high above his mother. This time she blinked once, slowly, and did not reach for him. Her baby was spread out across the black bars of the cage-front, small, orange and tender. He stopped and felt for his next grip, and then drew back as if he expected his mother to grasp him. She didn’t. She plucked some crimson leaves, and ate them. As the baby went on higher Sheena thought the mother’s gaze flicked to him, but she couldn’t be sure. Michael called softly, ‘Go on baby, go on up! You can do it!’

  Other people were taking photos. Smiles pressed in on the cage. By now the baby orang-utan was a good ten feet above his mother and well beyond her reach. But she’d move fast enough if she sensed he was going to fall. Or perhaps she knew he wouldn’t fall.

  All at once he was coming down, quickly and easily. He looked just like a little monkey. And she’d been thinking of him as a human baby, like her Michael and Jamie when they learned to walk. Now he was clambering over his mother’s fur again. Just for a moment she wrapped both her arms around him, folding him close so that all Sheena could see were the tufts of
orange fur on top of his head, and his eyes, which looked milky now, like the tired eyes of a baby.

  ‘She’d rip your arm off if you got too close,’ someone said.

  Already the crowd was breaking up. People closed their camera-cases and grasped buggy handles. Sheena felt Michael lean against her. He was getting tired. They’d go home before he started to grizzle and drag at her hand. She’d have liked to say goodbye to the mother, but there were people all around who would hear. And you couldn’t get close.

  ‘Say goodbye to the baby, Michael.’

  He twisted away, pouting, bored.

  ‘Bye bye monkey.’

  Païvi

  Really there wasn’t room for both of them in the tiny Ladies’ lavatory. The door kept butting open with a waft of noise and food smells as yet another impatient woman peered round, and then softened as she caught sight of Païvi doubled over at the sink, her big pregnant stomach bumping the vitreous enamel as she was shaken by wave after wave of sobs. One woman hovered, signalling readiness to help over the back of Païvi’s neck, but Ulli shook her head.

  ‘Everything’s fine. Just give us a few minutes. She’s a bit upset.’

  Then Ulli wondered if she’d been right to send the woman away. She wasn’t really a friend of Païvi’s herself. Certainly not a close friend. She had no useful ideas about what you did to help someone who was due to have her first child next week, and had suddenly dropped her knife in the middle of her creamed potatoes and heaved herself up from the table where she’d been eating dinner with Matti and Ulli and a couple of friends. She’d made for the Ladies so fast that all three men turned to Ulli as if she was a midwife they’d just telephoned.

  ‘You’d better go after her.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s starting.’

  ‘She doesn’t look too good, Ulli.’

  This unanimity of concern hadn’t lasted long. Ulli had glanced back at the table as she opened the lavatory door, and she’d seen them all eating again. Matti, the father of the taut round burden which had forced Païvi to sit two feet back from her dinner, was pouring himself another glass of wine. His fifth, Ulli calculated. Not a good sign. But he was keen on the baby, everyone said. He had two children already, by his first marriage, but he couldn’t see much of them any more because his wife had moved up to Rovaniemi to be near her parents – and who the hell wants to spend their weekends in Rovaniemi, taking their kids out for a couple of hours’ tenpin bowling, if they’re lucky?

  Once Païvi had told Ulli that she had always wanted to have children. When she’d thought of the future she’d always seen herself with a baby. Always, thought Ulli. Païvi was a couple of years younger than her. Certainly no more than twenty-one. But Païvi hadn’t got many qualifications at school. Unlike most of Ulli’s friends, she wasn’t in the middle of a course, or moaning about her tests, or going back to her doctorate after letting it lapse for a couple of years because after all you do need to earn money some time, or perhaps you want to travel, or you’re going through a bad patch in your relationship.

  Païvi had worked in a travel agency since she left school. The manager was shrewd enough to know that her fair shiny expectant looks had done more to sell fortnights in Rhodes than any amount of exam passes. She had stayed at work up to the last possible minute. They needed the money. Of course Matti had to send his maintenance up to Rovaniemi, and he didn’t earn much yet. He was still building up his music business, and although there were lots of exciting projects in the air, and he was having discussions with a big venue in Helsinki which might put on regular gigs, there wasn’t much actual money. In fact they really couldn’t manage without Païvi’s income. Her basic salary wasn’t much, of course, but look at all the bonuses she was always getting! And all that just for making herself agreeable behind a desk. Matti wished life could be that easy for everyone.

  Ulli couldn’t think how Païvi had stuck him for three months, let alone three years. Of course he was very nice-looking, with his slim, dark-featured face and his big eyes which seemed to grow shiny with liking you – at least, for as long as no one else came along. He made it feel as if you were both in something together, up to your necks. Ulli was glad she had a good memory, or else she was pretty sure Matti would have had no trouble convincing her that she’d been to bed with him after some evening of more than usual shininess and suggestiveness.

  But none of this was any help to Païvi. Poor Païvi, she looked as if she would retch up the baby if she went on like this. Ulli wished they knew each other better. It had always felt as if Païvi had been completely taken up with being Matti’s girlfriend, and then with having this baby, which had drawn her into a circle which was quite different to Ulli’s own. Ulli did not want to talk about babies with Païvi. Still less did she want to lay her hand on Païvi’s taut and restless stomach, the way some of the men did when they’d had a few drinks.

  ‘God, it’s amazing! What does it feel like to you, Païvi?’

  About Païvi herself, Ulli knew almost nothing. She was supposed to have absurd ideas about music, touching or embarrassing depending on which way you looked at it, or what kind of mood you were in, if you were Matti. He had pointedly separated his CDs and tapes from hers, in the little flat which had been Païvi’s before he moved in. Nobody could make any mistakes about who liked what.

  Of course it must be easy to get irritable, jammed together in the tiny flat Païvi had filled with coordinating curtains and chair-covers and pretty wallpaper. She was mad about kids. She had lots of nieces and nephews, and she took one or two of them out every Sunday. She kept a birthday book with all their birthdays written down; she’d even put down their friends’ birthdays, and take their friends out too, on trips to the sports hall or to ice hockey. If it was ice hockey, Matti would abandon his principles and go with her. The birthday book had little animals on its cover. Ulli had never seen much of Païvi in the evenings, because she always went out with the girls from work on Friday nights, and then she saw her family, and so on. It gave Matti a bit of freedom.

  Païvi straightened up from the wash-basin. She was quite white with big red blotches over her cheeks, and a salty, crushed look round her eyes. Her fair prettiness was snuffed out. Ulli damped a paper towel and passed it to her. Païvi wiped her face with great care, as if she was wiping a dish which she had always liked, even though nobody else much cared for it. Almost all her make-up had come off in crying. Her eyes looked smaller, but still a noticeable blue. She leaned forward and looked at herself in the mirror.

  ‘Oh, I do look a sight. I must put my face on.’

  ‘Are you feeling a bit better?’ asked Ulli hesitantly, ‘I mean, it might help to talk about it …’

  Païvi’s face in the mirror contracted into a small smile as if she was sharing with herself something complicated and ridiculous which couldn’t possibly be shared with other people. She fluffed out her lashes with her mascara wand, drew a perfect line around them with a grey kohl pencil, then smudged the line with a finger. Her eyes, defended once more, found Ulli’s in the mirror.

  ‘I just got a bit upset, that’s all. Silly, really.’

  ‘It’s not silly!’ cried Ulli, hot and indignant on Païvi’s behalf. ‘I mean, if you can’t ever show what you feel!’

  ‘But you can’t, can you,’ said Païvi calmly. ‘Not unless you want to put people off. Imagine what Matti would think if he saw me in this state. Thank God we haven’t got unisex toilets yet, that’s all I can say.’

  She blended foundation over her cheekbones and then stroked on blusher. Ulli watched in fascination as she smoothed two more dabs of blusher into the skin above her temples. At once her eyes began to shine as usual.

  ‘I look a wreck,’ Païvi commented. Well, never mind. My hair’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘It looks marvellous.’

  ‘Yes, everyone told me your hair goes funny when you’re pregnant, but it doesn’t seem to’ve, does it?’

  ‘No, it’s lovely.’

 
‘I think it falls out afterwards, though. That’ll be something to look forward to. Listen, Ulli, can you do me a favour? Get my coat from the doorman for me?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to have your dinner?’

  ‘No, I won’t. I’ll only get upset again. I can feel it. Then Matti’ll start drinking … you know the way it is. No, I’ll go home. I could do with an early night. I might as well get a few before the baby comes.’

  ‘Shall I get him to ring you a taxi?’

  ‘Better not. I’ll just slip out. I can pick one up on the centre, easily. And it’s not as if it’s snowing.’

  By the time Ulli got back with Païvi’s coat, Païvi had packed away her make-up and disposed of the damp towels. She had even wiped the shelf clean. She shrugged herself awkwardly into the coat, and buttoned it over the bulge of her child. The coat did up to the neck, like a little girl’s coat. For some reason it made Ulli want to cry herself.

  ‘I bet the doorman thought I’d had one too many,’ remarked Païvi.

  ‘No, Lasse was on the door. I told him you weren’t well. He was quite worried. You know he likes you.’

  Païvi opened the lavatory door, glanced cautiously towards the restaurant tables, and then crossed to the entrance lobby. At the door she turned to Ulli.

  ‘Thanks a million, Ulli. I’m really glad I had you there.’

  How can she mean that, thought Ulli. But that small tucked-in smile of Païvi’s couldn’t possibly be ironic … could it?

  ‘I’ll tell Matti. He’ll go home early, I expect.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t want to bother to do that. I’ll be asleep anyway. Don’t say anything, Ulli. Just say I wasn’t feeling too good, with the baby. Anyway, my Mum’s coming down tomorrow.’

  ‘I hope it goes all right, Païvi. You know, in case I don’t see you before –’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be fine. Just as long as I don’t start thinking about it all too much. I’m awful once I get my mind fixed on anything. It’ll be fine.’