Ghost Moon

by Ron Butlin

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Me? Maggie Davies. I came a month ago to arrange for — ’

  ‘Miss Davies? I wasn’t told you had an appointment today.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I had to — ’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down, Miss Davies? You must still be tired.’

  The chair she’d sat in on her previous visit was standing against the wall beside a large green metal filing cabinet. Maggie dragged it over to the desk.

  Mrs Saunders took a moment to finish her cigarette, stubbing it out in the ashtray.

  ‘Well, Miss Davies. How did it go?’

  ‘How did –?’

  ‘The birth, Miss Davies. The birth of your child. Everything went satisfactorily, I believe. Smooth delivery and no forceps – yes?’

  ‘They said everything was fine.’ Then she added, ‘Afterwards I felt very — ’

  ‘The baby certainly looks healthy enough. No harelip, webbed toes or fingers, thank goodness.’

  ‘I saw him for only a few seconds, he seemed . . . perfect. He looked lovely. I wanted to hold him, but they — ’

  ‘Yes, best all round. No sense in causing unnecessary distress. Can’t begin too early to get the child used to being without his — ’

  ‘He’s called Tom.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘My son is called Tom.’

  ‘Is he? I hadn’t realised.’

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘I understand your concern, Miss Davies. Only natural, and many would consider it does you credit. But I must repeat what I said when you were here before, and urge you to do no such thing.’

  ‘But he’s my son and I — ’

  ‘I advised you to leave him with us, if you remember – leave him here and forget all about him.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘You do understand?’’

  Maggie said nothing.

  ‘Once more, Miss Davies, I strongly urge you to turn around and walk straight out the door. Now. This very minute. Out the door and don’t look back.’

  ‘But Tom’s all I have, and — ’

  ‘Like I said, it’s time to begin your new life, and let your new-born child begin his.’ The superintendent half-rose from her seat as if preparing to show Maggie out of the room. ‘The sooner he can be put up for adoption, the sooner he can be — ’

  ‘I want to see Tom.’

  Mrs Saunders sat down again. ‘Adoption. This really is the best time. Everything can be arranged with the minimum of fuss and concluded in a matter of days. Like I say, best for everyone. Best for you and best for little . . . What did you say his name was?’

  Maggie made no response.

  ‘Best for your son.’ The superintendent paused. ‘Miss Davies?’

  Maggie sat and said nothing.

  ‘You’re being extremely selfish, you know.’

  Maggie gripped the sides of her chair. She sat up straight, met the older woman’s gaze and held it. ‘I’m his mother.’ She could feel the beginnings of tears behind her eyes.

  The superintendent leant forward. ‘I agree, Miss Davies, that you’re his . . . mother.’ Paused for, but unspoken, the word unmarried hung in the air between them.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Saunders, I am his mother . . .’ Then, without waiting for the older woman’s invitation, Maggie stood up. ‘. . . And, as I have already told you, my son is called Tom. I’ve come to see him. Now where is he?’

  Mrs Saunders shook her head.

  ‘Miss Davies, you must understand that I don’t mean to be hard. I know it may seem like that. In my years here I’ve seen so many children . . . and so much unhappiness.’

  ‘If you don’t take me to see Tom this instant, I will leave and return with the police.’

  The superintendent snorted: ‘The police? You? An unmarried mother of no fixed abode? Do you really think they’d pay any heed to the likes of you?’

  ‘I only want to see my wee boy. That’s not a crime.’

  ‘Your child is now my responsibility, Miss Davies – which means that I decide who sees him and who doesn’t.’

  ‘I’m not going to harm him. I love him, and — ’

  ‘Love him? You’ve hardly even seen him. You don’t know anything about him. You wouldn’t even recognise — ’

  Maggie jumped to her feet. ‘i love him! Can’t you understand? He’s my son, I’m all he’s got.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Right, the police it is!’ She started towards the door.

  The superintendent stood up.

  ‘We don’t want any trouble, Miss Davies. We don’t want the children upset, do we?’ For a moment she seemed to have finished speaking, but then added, ‘You mothers can only do what you must, I suppose.’ She shook her head. ‘If you get to see him this time, you must promise never to come back here again? Will you?’

  Maggie didn’t reply. She stood and she waited.

  Finally Mrs Saunders gave a sigh, crossed to the door and opened it. ‘Come on, then.’

  A couple of small boys, aged about four and five, were down on their knees playing in the main hall with their Dinky cars, racing them up and down the floor and crashing them into the skirting. The smaller one had a harelip.

  ‘It’s a bit cold here, boys, why don’t you go through to the playroom?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Saunders.’ Dutifully, they got to their feet and trooped off.

  ‘They’re brothers, these two.’ The superintendent began to go up the stairs. ‘Refused to be split up. Each time Andy – he’s the older one, the one without the . . . (she touched her top lip) – was taken by a family, he acted up so badly he was always sent back. No one ever offered to take Bobby, of course, let alone both of them together. A real shame. Little Bobby’s a delightful child really. They both are.’

  ‘And Donna?’

  ‘Her mother died when she was nine. Father said he was a working man and couldn’t cope. No relatives, it seemed. Brought her here to see if she’d like a day visit. Then never came back. Turned out to be a false name and address. No paperwork because we thought it was just for a few hours. Certainly never made that mistake again. This is Tom’s room.’

  A dozen or so mismatched cribs and cots were stood side by side along the walls. The centre of the room was taken up by a table covered with several feeding bottles, a stack of clean nappies, a stack of clean towels. There was a desk light and what looked like a diary or some kind of record book was laid open next to a half-filled cup of tea. An armchair and small foot stool relaxed in one corner while a deep sink with draining board occupied another. The room felt overheated and probably neither of the two large windows had been opened today. The smell of soiled nappies, bedding and powdered milk caught in her throat.

  A woman wearing a dark blue housecoat stood over by an open cupboard, checking through shelves of linen.

  Each cot had a handwritten number affixed to its head rail.

  Mrs Saunders called over to the attendant: ‘Beryl. Queen’s Crescent – came in yesterday afternoon?’

  Aged anything between thirty and fifty, Boss Beryl was small and stocky, her dark hair set in stiff curls. Standing with one hand resting on her hip and staring flatly across the room, she reminded Maggie of a rather squat and angry-looking petrol pump. ‘Queen’s Crescent?’ There was a swift jerk of her head in the direction of the far corner. ‘Number 11, and he’s sleeping.’

  ‘Miss Davies won’t wake him. She’s just looking in for a short visit.’ Then the superintendent left the room.

  Without taking her eyes off this unwanted intrusion, the petrol pump lifted down a green blanket from one of the shelves and made as if to re-fold it.

  Maggie picked her way across the room between discarded towels and pillow-cases heaped here and there on the floor, then
skirted round the central table.

  A baby started howling. Crib number 11?

  No. It came from over by one of the windows, from some other cot, some other baby. She ignored it.

  But then, as she hurried across to Tom’s crib, she felt the unknown child’s cry pierce her, felt it like a wound in the tip of her breast. Glancing down she saw a small damp patch on the front of her blouse.

  Side-stepping a slew of wet-looking sheets, she almost knocked over a pail of water with soiled nappies dripping over the side.

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’ shouted the petrol pump.

  The pail stood next to an empty cot, the pillow almost small enough for a doll’s bed. Crib number 10.

  Tom’s would be next.

  Crib number 11: a halo of feather-light fair hair, scrunched-up face, wrinkled skin, patches of reddish pink, impossibly small hands . . .

  She reached into the crib. More than her uncertainty and her awkwardness was her joy. Overwhelming, heart-swelling joy.

  Nervously, her fingers brushed the warm smoothness of his cheek.

  Boss Beryl? Mrs Saunders and her lecture about selfishness? – she didn’t care about them, but was nervous suddenly, afraid almost. Afraid she was about to burst into tears. With Boss Beryl scrutinising her every movement, starting to cry would be the worst thing she could do. She daren’t show any weakness, not here. If she picked Tom up too quickly, she’d be accused of trying to usurp Boss Beryl’s authority. If she hesitated for too long, she’d be judged uncaring, confirming that she should be written off as an unfit mother. Which, being unmarried, she already was in everyone’s eyes.

  She straightened Tom’s bright patchwork blanket, stroked his uncovered arm.

  Petrol pump Beryl took a step forward. One single step – and it was as if she’d been turned into a wild cat ready to attack.

  But not even a dozen wild cats could have stopped Maggie now. In one smooth act of loving reclamation she reached down, lifted Tom out of his cot and took him into her arms.

  ‘Tom, Tom,’ she swayed him back and forth.

  ‘Leave him where he is.’ The wild cat was only inches away, hissing and spitting. ‘You’ll have him yelling the place down. Give him here.’

  Maggie ignored her. Moments later she was holding Tom to her breast and, for as long as he remained there with his small mouth clutching onto her and sucking, nothing else in the world seemed to matter.

  When he’d finished, she lifted him up close to the window so he could see the rain-streaked glass, the separate water-drops racing down the pane. ‘Tom, Tom, hush-a-bye, Tom. Look!’ she pointed to a clear drop that trembled, poised, holding itself together until it was ready to start its journey. ‘Look – that’s you!’

  She brought him up close to her face to feel the warmth of his stubby little fingers against her cheeks and lips.

  After watching the curtain of rain break into a swirl of colours where the glass was flawed – ‘That’s your very own rainbow, Tom!’ – she whisked him past the petrol punp and out of the room, along the landing, down the stairs and across the empty hall, into the crowded playroom to show him to everyone, and to see the wind-up train set, the big toy-box, the stacks of wooden bricks. Then, his introduction into society complete, she brought him back upstairs again.

  The instant his head touched the pillow, his tiny face scrunched up into a scream of such ferocity it hardly seemed possible to have come out of such a tiny mouth. His small body shook with tears. Howling, howling tears. Crib number 12 woke up, setting up a domino-effect of howls and shrieks.

  Boss Beryl was furious. A feral hiss: ‘See what you’ve done, see what you’ve done . . .’

  Maggie had been pretty overwhelmed by the typewriter Jean had given her a month previously. It looked like a shrunk-down church organ, and was about as appealing. At first she’d ignored it. It might be the road to her salvation as Jean had said, it certainly looked unwelcoming enough. Like an accompanying bible, the instruction book was short on laughs and promised only duty and hard labour. Two days had passed before she’d finally put in a sheet of paper and turned the roller as directed in Chapter One: Getting Started. Then she’d taken the sheet out again. Smoothed it flat, re-inserted it straighter and tried a second time. She hit a key. Then a second key. A third. A fourth. She’d looked up at the paper: mivc. She’d tried again – michaelmagie took five attempts. michaelmaggiejean took nearly five hundred, it seemed like. That achieved, she’d started to work her away through the manual, exercise after exercise, till her fingers were sore.

  ‘Got a tune oot o it yet?’ Jean had asked as she left the bakery with Maggie still battering away at the keys.

  ‘Getting there.’

  A few days later, she’d tried typewriting a letter to Michael. It took nearly the whole evening and used up a lot of paper. Her next had been handwritten. By the time she was ready to give birth, the road to salvation had brought her up to a hit-and-miss ten words a minute. Fewer and fewer mistakes, and each one swiftly erased.

  With Tom safe and secure at Woodstock House for the time being, she now had to find a job – and as soon as possible

  It was nine o’clock on the following Monday morning, the beginning of a new working week – and for Maggie, the beginning of her new working life. She hoped. She’d have to lie to them, of course, and not only about her typing skills. no unmarried mothers wanted was surely written in mile-high letters above the centre of Edinburgh.

  After a last adjustment to her collar, she inspected herself in the mirror – the ivory silk blouse, black pleated skirt, patent leather shoes. Shiny black handbag.

  From Jean: ‘You’re just the dab. Perfect.’

  The mirror showed: respectable, trustworthy – a thirty-one-year-old woman who’d soon be turning thirty-two.

  But a mother? – did she still look like an unmarried mother?

  Drawing her comb through her hair one last time. Pursing her red lipsticked lips and allowing herself another glance in the glass. No motherly looks, please. Think single. Think confidence. Think ten words a minute. Think pay-packets.

  ‘My seams straight?’

  ‘Aa the wey up an aa the wey doun. Keep smiling Maggie, like our army boys – chest oot and stomach in. Your coat, ma’am. And aye mind yer Rabbie Burns – A man’s a man for aa that! A man’s a meal ticket – plenty women marry fer it. Course, ye’re welcome tae bide here as lang as ye want, Maggie, but — ’

  ‘Thanks, but come my first pay packet, I’ll be moving into a place of my own. Then I’ll take back Tom and — ’

  ‘— and then what? I’m telling you, yer only chance is to get yersel a man.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Or someone like him!’

  Which made them both laugh.

  Raw winter light streaked the length of Dalry Road, cutting round the outlines of the tenements’ edges and corners, trimming the roofs and chimneys exactly to size. The pavements seemed to have been polished overnight and now had a sheen as smooth as the Union Canal. As Maggie turned down Dalry Road, she felt she was walking on water . . .

  But she wouldn’t be walking all the way into town on foot, not today. Not if she wanted to remain looking neat, crisp and employable.

  The tram rumbled down to the foot of Dalry Road, went clatter-clack, clatter-clack over the intersecting tramlines at Haymarket, then trundled along the sunlit valley of Atholl Crescent before entering Shandwick Place and the West End. Past the ­Caledonian station and hotel with its uniformed doorman on the steps and the taxis lined up in front, and then into Princes Street.

  The thirty-one-year-old, highly experienced typist got off at the bottom of Frederick Street and strolled over to the nearest plate-glass window. Against a background blur of office staff and shop assistants hurrying to reach their morning’s work on time, she checked off her credentials one by one: the seriou
s glance, the spontaneous smile, the tilt of her head. The poise, the confidence. Professional. Reliable. Dependable. Single. Childless.

  By mid-afternoon Maggie had had it with slogging in and out of offices and agencies, up and down narrow staircases, she’d had it with Snooty Juniors, their Reception voices and their forms. Coming out of an office in Castle Street she walked down to Princes Street and was in time to see a tram marked Morningside coming along from Waverley. Good enough. Next thing, she was on board and soon turning up Lothian Road towards Tollcross, Bruntsfield and Carluke Avenue.

  Ignoring the brass bell-pull, she let herself in through the unlocked front door of Woodstock House, slipped across the hall and went up the stairs without even a glance in the direction of the superintendent’s office. Then along the top landing and into the dormitory, making straight for cot number 11. In one smooth sweeping gesture, she leant down and gathered Tom into her arms.

  Mrs Saunders appeared in the doorway a few minutes later: ‘You promised you wouldn’t come back, Miss Davies.’

  ‘I promised nothing.’

  ‘She was here Saturday as well, and Sunday,’ spoke up Beryl the snitch.

  Maggie could once again feel the pain piercing her breasts and the warm wetness of milk leaking from her. With her free hand she unbuttoned her blouse.

  The superintendent took a step towards her. ‘Stop! I won’t allow — ’

  Maggie held Tom in the crook of her arm, ready to suck.

  ‘Are you going to rip my child out of my arms?’

  The two women glared at each other while the wild cat looked on. Paying no attention to anyone else, Tom fastened onto Maggie’s nipple and began to suckle.

  ‘I’m warning you, Miss Davies.’

  Without breaking eye-contact, Maggie shifted Tom’s position to make him more comfortable.

  The superintendent raised her voice: ‘I said, I’m warning you, Miss Davies.’

  ‘She was like this at the weekend, too, Mrs Saunders. Thinks she’s Lady Muck, but she’s nothing more than — ’

  ‘Get on with your work, Beryl. You see the trouble you cause, Miss Davies. Coming here, disturbing — ’