Go to Sleep

by Helen Walsh

  22

  I lap the park while I try to decide where we should go. Joe is definitely an outdoor boy, that much is plain already. He’s never more relaxed than when we’re out in the buggy, no matter how fresh the wind whipping into us. I decide we’ll head for Lark Lane. I just need a general destination really, then the wind can blow us any which way it wants once we’re en route. But no sooner do I set our controls for the middle path past the lake and beyond than a sudden hankering to take my baby down to South Lodge takes seed within me. It gives me a strange pleasure, this notion. Something about it offers up a warmth, a familiarity that I find blissfully reassuring. I can easily do both though and I smile at the plan, all pleased with myself. That’s what we’re going to do, me and you, Joe: a leisurely browse around Lark Lane; a cup of tea and a slice of cake; and then on to St Michael’s and your mummy’s childhood home. It’ll be bedtime before we know it. Another day dealt with; another one defeated.

  We exit on to Ullet Road and I’ve barely walked three steps when a car toots its horn and pulls up half onto the pavement. It’s Jan. She leans across to the passenger window of her doggedly retro, racing green MG. She looks haggard.

  ‘Rachel! Thank God! I’ve been looking for you.’

  I’m panicked by the look on her face. My heart speeds up unpleasantly.

  ‘What’s happened? It’s Dad, isn’t it!’

  ‘No! No.’

  There’s a softening of face and tone as she turns off the engine, checks the traffic and jumps out. She lopes round the front of the car to where I’m standing, frozen, awaiting the worst. She goes to hug me, but pulls out of it, unsure.

  ‘I called round last night with some shopping – nappies and stuff – but there was no one in.’

  ‘Oh. What time?’

  ‘Late. The buggy was gone from the hall.’

  It takes a beat for this to sink in.

  ‘How did you . . . how did you get in?’

  ‘That’s why I’ve been sick with worry! I didn’t want to put anything else on your dad, he’s—’ She steps back a pace, looks me up and down and shakes her head. ‘Rache . . . you’d left the front door wide open. And the door to your flat. I checked it all over, just to make sure you hadn’t been burgled.’ Her face crawls crimson for a second. ‘I just had to see you. Make sure you were okay—’ She purses her lips. ‘After the message you left.’

  Immediately, instinctively, I get a flash of something; a sense of some awful thing I’ve done. But then it’s gone. I grope after it, but my yawning subconscious swallows it up.

  ‘What . . . what message?’

  ‘On my mobile. Last night.’ A black four-by-four screeches around the bend and almost runs right into Jan’s car’s back end. It swerves at the last moment, horn blaring and I squat down on automatic pilot for Joe to stir. Jan places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Come on. Walk down to ours and I’ll put the kettle on,’ she says and swings back round to the driver’s side.

  *

  Until we make our way up the drive, I’m not sure I will actually go through with this. When Dad and Jan moved in together they did everything with me in mind – the huge top floor given over to me, to come and go as I liked, when I liked. I didn’t like. I hardly stayed there at all before buying my own place. Jan lets me in with a tense smile and goes straight through to the kitchen. I park a sleeping Joe in the hallway and follow her. She’s leaning back against the range, arms folded, looking at the quarry-tiled floor. She looks up as I come in. That tense smile again.

  ‘Is everything okay, Rachel?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  She goes to say something, seems to change her mind then, unable to hold back, hits me with it anyway.

  ‘The phone message. You sounded . . . troubled.’ She registers my alarm, steps over and places a hand on my wrist, and the gesture feels so unnatural that it’s all I can do to stop myself gently pulling away from her. She senses the resistance, steps back. ‘Don’t worry. I knew it wasn’t you talking. I deleted it straight away.’

  And whatever it is, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be dragged back there. Just got to focus on moving on, moving forward, one foot firmly in front of the other. It’s the only way I can survive this. Jan seems to make the decision to let it go. She turns to root in a big cupboard.

  ‘You must be famished,’ she says.

  ‘Why? Did you look in my kitchen cupboards, too?’

  I watch her through the reflection of the big kitchen window, biting back her anger. She turns sharply, mouth twitching slightly.

  ‘I did, actually, Rachel. One of the first things I thought when I played back your obnoxious message was, I wonder if she’s getting enough sugar? More fool me!’

  I step across to her. I really do not want to hug her – I don’t. But I know what I said, now. I remember. And it was nasty. It was spiteful. But she’s right, too – it wasn’t me. In my darker moments I may well think the worst of her situation with my father; but I honestly don’t think badly of Jan. She’s okay. She’s made of the right stuff. I put my arms around her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jan. Truly. I . . . I don’t know what’s happening to me . . . since Joe. I . . .’

  She pulls back, wipes away the two or three tears that have dripped from my eye sockets.

  ‘It must be hard. Not having your mum around at a time like this. I mean your dad, he dotes on you, but unless you’ve been through it . . .’ She lets this hang in the air, waiting for me to pick up on it. My mind is fuzzy and refuses to take in the bare details she’s laying out. ‘I know I missed Mum terribly when I lost my baby. I really, really needed her.’

  And now she has my attention – of course she does! Her revelation prods me hard in the face, sitting me up straight.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. Stillbirth. Full term too. God, but he was beautiful . . .’

  Her eyes moisten as her thoughts take her far away from here. We don’t speak for ages. Eventually, humbled, I clear my throat.

  ‘I thought you were . . .’

  ‘What? Barren?’ She laughs, nastily. ‘Maybe I am. I’ll never know. They found a tumour and . . .’ She fixes her eyes on me. ‘That more or less took care of that one.’

  She doesn’t look away. I try to steady my head, spinning at a tilt, as it tries to digest the rapid bullets of information.

  ‘Fuck. I wish I’d known,’ I say.

  ‘Why? Would you have been nicer to me?’ She raises her eyebrows and holds my stare for a second, then laughs with all her teeth to show me she’s just teasing. ‘It’s okay. I think you did a pretty good job, all things considered. If I was you, I’d have hated me.’

  She gets up, stands at the window, and for a moment it’s Mum standing there, looking out to the Welsh mountains and beyond, the arms not so much crossed at her chest but cradling her heart, pulling the yoke of her shoulders tight. I edge towards her. I have to go and touch her. The woman at the window swings round. Cool. Easy. Hard as nails.

  Jan.

  She smiles and bats away our confessional with another clap of the hands.

  ‘Now then, your dad will be home soon,’ she says. ‘I want you slept and sane before he gets back.’ It takes me a moment to work out what she’s offering here. Is she telling me I can go upstairs and have a kip? ‘Go on. Go and get your head down before the little tyrant wakes up.’

  And I’m thinking – no. I can’t. Not here. It wouldn’t feel right. But I’m already drifting down and under as I stagger past her, up two flights of stairs and into the attic bedroom. And as our cheeks grazed as I passed, did she say something? Or did I dream that?

  *

  I only sleep for an hour, but it’s a stone-solid, dead to the world slumber and I wake feeling more refreshed than I have done in ages. I sit up in bed and suffer a twinge of regret that I didn’t make more of a go of this place. I could have made a proper artist’s den out of an attic this size – and those views, too. As good as South Lodge. Better.

 
I haul myself up out of bed and, as there’s no sign of outrage from Joe downstairs I prolong the selfish moment with a languorous browse through the boxes and unpacked chests. There are clothes I’d forgotten I ever had: t-shirts with bands’ names on – Mansun, Space. God! I loved the little fella from Space, what was his name? Tommy! Tommy Scott. I smile and put the t-shirts back down in the tea chest, move on to dolls and teddy bears, and magazines I’d refused to throw out. Just 17. Patches.

  And then I come across a shoebox, filled to overflowing with photographs. I sit down on the dusty floor, place the shoebox in the fold of my skirt and slowly, slowly start to sift through the memories. Most of them are just me and Dad, or just me with a pony, me with an ice cream; but there’s one of all three of us – me, Mum and Dad. It’s very posed, very framed – clearly the work of a roving promenade photographer. But we look happy, and that makes me a tinge sad. Before I’m able to dip back into the shoebox though, I hear Joe mewling down below, and it’s a nice, even-tempered ‘feed me’ cry rather than the unhinged shrieking he seems to like working himself up to for me.

  I go downstairs to find them in the kitchen. Jan’s holding Joe close and, even though he’s shouting out for a feed, he looks a picture of contentedness. She’s got him up in a little sailor’s outfit that drowns his tiny frame, and I can’t help a squeal of delighted laughter as I clap eyes on him.

  ‘Oh, Jan! He looks adorable.’

  She wells up with pleasure.

  ‘I was saving this for Christmas,’ she says, handing me my son. ‘But we had a little accident, didn’t we, darling?’

  ‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’

  I sit down, unbutton my blouse absentmindedly. It’s second nature to me, now. Jan is all action all of a sudden – picking up keys, bustling around, chatting instructions out loud to herself. Businesslike, she pulls on a jacket and I try not to laugh. Jan the spiky feminist, the woman who accused Dad of being prudish because he refused to visit a nudist beach, reduced to crimson flushes by the sight of a woman feeding her child.

  ‘I’ve, ah – I have to go to Uni for a while, tie up some loose ends before Malawi. I’ll bring us a takeaway back. Chinese okay?’

  I’m tempted. I haven’t eaten properly in days, and Joe certainly seems less fractious here, in their homely country kitchen. I too feel less hemmed in. But this is their life, Dad’s and Jan’s, not mine and Joe’s; and staying will only make things harder when it’s finally time to step back out into reality. Sooner or later I shall have to face up to it. I decided to do this solo; that was my choice. I can’t just dip in and out of independence as the mood takes me. I need some structure even more than Joe does. So, heartened by a decent bit of kip, I steel myself against the easy option. I can almost taste the Singapore noodles as I make my apologies.

  ‘It’s just . . . I’m trying to gradually get him into something resembling a routine, Jan. If I give him his bath at the same time, more or less, he’ll start to know what’s meant by bedtime!’

  I hit her with my best ‘everything’s fine’ smile, and she doesn’t put up much of a fight.

  ‘Okay, Rachel. Just so long as everything is okay.’ She ducks her face down to mine. ‘It is all fine then, you and the baby? Isn’t it?’

  And the expression on her face implores me to say yes, all is well. To make it easy for her and Dad to go away next week.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Things couldn’t be better.’

  She hugs me, briefly, clinically, like she’s clinched a deal. And just as curtly she picks up her bag and goes to leave, pausing to shout back that we’re welcome to stay absolutely as long as we want but to pull the door to when I leave.

  *

  Even though Jan has forewarned me, I’m in shock. How did the flat get like this? I must have been burgled, no matter whether she’s checked the place out or not. The flat resembles nothing other than a crime scene. Drawers ransacked, tipped out; books, papers, clothes strewn across the floor. But the more I search, the more it transpires that nothing has gone, nothing is missing except the moments surrounding this aberration. I have no recollection of it whatsoever. When did I do this? What got into me?

  I feed Joe, settle him and set about tidying it all up, and once everything is back in place I scour the place again, from top to bottom. I know all the conventional wisdom about ‘healthy dirt’; how babies who frolic around in muck build up immunities to germs. But the old wives who dispensed that folklore were frolicking around in an age of innocence, before the post-antibiotic apocalypse of MRSA. It’s out there, it’s everywhere and by the time I’ve finished my hands are stinging red raw from my exertions to safeguard my baby from these invisible assailants.

  The house is scrubbed and Joe is asleep. Perhaps if I didn’t feel so manic, so hyper-wired, I could sleep too, but that burst of activity has left me weirdly energised. I try to work through my big list of things to do – paying bills, putting another load of washing on, hanging the last lot out. But all I can think about is James. I still can’t believe it of him. I have to know.

  I pick up the phone, dial the hostel.

  ‘Andy . . . Good, good. He’s good, too. Wonderful . . .’ A pause. I smile as I speak, to steel myself. ‘Andy. Would you get James Mac for me?’

  23

  The world-weary waitress mugs a sympathetic smile as I glance at the wall clock a third time, then check my phone for messages. I order another coffee, hope and pray that Joe doesn’t wake and try to lose myself to the sideshow outside, the never-ending hamster wheel of chancers and dancers. There are two lads lurking outside the café, no older than thirteen or fourteen, furtive eyes scoping for business beneath the rim of their Lowe Alpine ski hats. They’ve got their eye on a harried mum, too bothered by her squabbling kids and shopping bags to notice their slow prowl towards her. God, she’s asking for it too, her handbag dangling off the pushchair, wide open and there for the taking. I reach over, bang hard on the window – three solid thumps. She doesn’t see me but the noise startles her, jolts her to her senses, and she reels her brood in close. The lads drop away, swing round. I move away from the window but it’s too late. They’ve already sussed who the snitch was. They come right up to the glass, all snarls and jabbing eyes, and they stay there, let me sweat it out a little while, before they slap the window, once, laugh at me, and turn tail, skipping in and out of traffic towards their next mark.

  When I look down I’m shaking. I know all too well from my job what some of the lads round here are capable of, and I’m smitten with the sudden realisation of how vulnerable I am, now. I can no longer act on instinct, on a whim. I can no longer automatically stand up for what is right. The choices I make from now on are choices that will impact upon my baby. I have to be rock solid; there’s no one else looking out for him.

  I take in the empty seat opposite me – James’s unopened can of Coke, the plate of chips gone cold – and I’m furious all of a sudden. Even if he’d sat there lying through his teeth, it would have meant something. At least he’d have turned up. But this? This is just fucking with me. Why would he arrange to meet me here if he had no fucking intention of showing? I pay up, more bile rising as Joe starts to stir.

  I wheel him outside on to Breck Road, my anger shrinking away to sadness. Such a shame that James still sees me like that, as the enemy, the system. Thank God Joe will never end up that way. Suspicious. Cynical. Hardened. But I don’t know that, do I? Joe is a classic sob story already. Never knew his father? Check. One-parent kid from the mean streets? Check. Mixed race mongrel, ripe for bullying? Over my dead body. I check my phone one last time. Fuck James Mc-fucking-Iver! He is not getting away with this!

  There’s a gentle wind up on the Brow as we cut through towards James’s hostel; it’s warm and salty, gently lifting my hair from my forehead as if to get a better look at me. It feels good. I tilt my head up and watch the clouds being blown along – charcoals, purple-greys. It’s a gorgeous sky; low-bellied, belligerent, full of promise and possibility. N
ot that long ago a sky like this would have had me legging it down to the river to chase the wild Mersey spume, or heading over to Keith’s to get red-wine drunk, then back to my rooftop to get smashed on the storm that would follow.

  I stay there with my head thrown back, wanting to feel it again, that mad shrill tingling in my loins. But it doesn’t come and I wonder if it ever will again. I open my eyes wide to the wind, let it sting them sore, and I stick my tongue out to taste the tears that follow. I’m still here. Still alive. But only just.

  *

  Andy buzzes me into the hostel with his usual faux-spiky greeting.

  ‘Can you not keep away from here?’

  But he mellows when he hears Joe gurgling in the background and bounds right down to help me up the stairs, all twinkling eyes and gooey smiles when he sets eyes on Joe. ‘Oh my, oh my, what a cracker you are!’ I’d swear those are tears in his eyes. He steps back from the pram. ‘Ah, but you forget how fucking wee they are.’

  He presses for the lift, stands back as it rattles on down. The doors judder open. It hums of weed and cheap after-shave. Neither of us refers to it but Andy increases the pitch of his voice as though it might drown out the smell. The doors jerk closed and the lift vibrates into action. Andy fills me in on his plans to take over the building next door and convert it into separate living accommodation for mothers and babies.