by Minna Howard
Polly rang again that evening. ‘Daddy can’t get home until he comes with us on the thirtieth,’ she informed her. ‘Nina is furious.’
Can’t, Sarah thought, or won’t spend the extra money? She did not want to talk about Dan and his baby, though she suddenly realised she didn’t know what sex the baby was. She asked Polly.
‘A girl; Annabel, I think Nina wants to call her. I can’t believe that I have a half-sister. It’s weird, isn’t it, Mum?’
‘It is, rather.’ Then, to get off the subject, she told her about Robert, his daughter and the coming baby and her having to break into his house and meeting him in Scotland.
‘When you get home, don’t be surprised if you hear a baby crying next door.’ She finished.
‘Goodness, what a fiasco… but at least that is normal. I mean, being a grandfather at his age,’ Polly said. ‘Imagine when I have children. Supposing I had one soon, it would be almost the same age as my half-sister. Dad would be a grandfather and a new father, all at the same time. That really is creepy, isn’t it?’
Twenty-One
Sarah arrived back home from Scotland on the evening of 2nd January. She was feeling tired and hung-over after another good party given by Edward and Mandy’s nearest neighbours. To her relief, the guests had been more local and no one had mentioned Robert.
Tim and a girl were in the hall on their way out.
‘Hi, Mum.’ Tim kissed her somewhere round her ear. ‘Had a good time?’ He did not give her time to answer. ‘We’re just out. Oh, this is Jessica.’ He gestured towards the skinny girl who hovered behind him, holding on to his other hand as if her life depended upon it.
Sarah smiled, said hello. She supposed this was the girl Tim had met while skiing, but it was better not to make any reference to it in case it wasn’t. She said instead, ‘Is Polly here?’
‘No. She’ll be back later.’ He dropped Jessica’s hand and took her suitcase from her and put it by the stairs. ‘Must dash. See you tomorrow.’ He rushed out, Jessica scuttling out behind him.
Sarah tried to ignore the heavy emptiness that threatened to envelop her. On her first evening back, she’d have liked to have had her children here around her. The house seemed drearily silent after being with Edward and Mandy. There was never a moment’s peace in their house. Boys fighting, playing loud music, dogs joining in. A noisy, rumbustious family house, like hers used to be.
She went into the living room and saw the overflowing pile of post that had been put on a chair. She’d pour herself a glass of wine, put on some music and go through them. Polly might be home soon.
The smooth, haunting sound of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ lifted her spirits; she let herself sink into it, only to be disturbed by a baby’s cry piercing the wall. So, Freya’s baby had been born. How was Robert coping with that?
She sat on, reading late Christmas cards, smiling over messages from friends, sorting the bills, throwing out the junk; but the baby’s cry seeped in under the music, urgent, demanding, pitiful. The unwelcome figure of Dan appeared in her thoughts, looming up so close he could have been here with her in this room, bringing with him memories of their past.
She tried to push them away. Hadn’t she promised herself that her New Year’s resolution would be to forget Dan? Padlock their life together into the recesses of her mind and throw away the key? But the memories marched on and stood to attention before her, willing her to think of them. That was the trouble with having children, she thought weakly, they were the past and the future. Their conception, birth and childhood bound one for ever to the other parent.
When they’d arrived back from the hospital after giving birth to Tim, she and Dan hadn’t known what to do when he cried. Her own mother came to help, though she seemed to have forgotten what to do with new born babies, and kept escaping to Harrods instead. They rocked him, fed him, worried over him, and even drove him round the silent streets at three in the morning, hoping he would sleep. When he was silent they were afraid he had died, and they crept into his room, half fearful of waking him, half fearful of never waking him again. Would Dan remember those times now, as his new child cried? The mouse, according to Polly, had never had children. Would she worry while he, an old hand at fatherhood, reassured her?
She must not imagine things that might not be happening. She must put her life with Dan behind her and get on with her new, independent life. But the baby’s cries from next door kept throwing up pictures of Dan when he was the proud young father of Tim and Polly, and her heart thudded with pain. If only that child would stop its crying, she could get her mind off it. She turned up the music, but still underneath the soft tones the cry went on.
There was a long ring on the bell. It must be Polly, who had forgotten her key yet again. Lucky for her she was here. She opened the door with an exasperated smile of welcome, and Robert, pale and dishevelled, stood there.
‘I’m really sorry to disturb you, Sarah, but there’s no one else.’ His voice came out slightly awkwardly. ‘If there was anyone else I could call on, I would; but you’re a mother, you must know about babies.’ He looked so distraught – his immaculate hair on end, his face pouchy under the eyes – she had to laugh.
He said grumpily, ‘It’s not at all funny. We can’t sleep; this child never stops crying.’
Sarah said, ‘It’s a long time since I had a baby.’
‘You must know something,’ he said desperately. ‘More than us, anyway. Please come, if only for a minute. We are at our wits’ end.’
She could not help herself feeling sorry for him and she went with him into his house. Freya looked exhausted. She was dressed in a grey tracksuit that drained even more colour from her face; her hair, lank and unwashed, was looped behind her ears. In her arms was a furious red-faced baby, screaming its lungs out.
Freya said, ‘He was all right in the hospital, but ever since we got him home he won’t stop crying. The health visitor says there is nothing wrong with him, but…’ She had to shout over his screams. The noise was beginning to give Sarah a headache.
‘Are you feeding him enough?’ she asked.
‘I’m trying to, but he won’t take it, and this breastfeeding is so painful. I can’t think why. It’s meant to be natural, isn’t it?’ Freya sounded as if she was on the verge of tears herself.
Sarah remembered the betrayal she had felt over the same subject. ‘Childbirth is also natural, and, as I remember well jolly painful,’ she said. ‘Have you any baby milk? You know, in a packet?’
‘They gave me a sample pack. But I shouldn’t give it to him, should I? It’s not so good as breast milk, it will get him off to a bad start.’ Freya implied that giving him baby milk would poison him at once.
Sarah sighed. Oh, the guilt of parenthood. From the moment of conception, even before conception, one was advised to eat certain foods, play music, talk to the growing foetus to provide it with the maximum chances before it was born, as if it should emerge as a ready-made genius, tutored before birth. You were made to feel guilty if you wanted a pain-free birth, in case the drugs hurt the child, or if you couldn’t or didn’t want to breastfeed. On it went, through school and adolescence and even on to adulthood. When would someone have the courage to shout stop – why add further difficulties to the hundreds already there?
‘If you haven’t got enough milk yourself, you should give him some baby formula,’ she said. ‘It’s all very well waiting for your milk to come in, but in the meantime the baby needs to be fed. It might not be that, but let’s start there.’
Freya looked unsure, but Robert said loudly over the baby’s cries. ‘Then please do it. The milk’s in the kitchen, I’ll show you.’
Sarah followed him into his denim kitchen. He opened a cupboard and produced a small packet of milk formula and a new bottle. Of course, there were no sterilizing tablets.
‘Have you a clean saucepan?’ she asked.
‘Of course it’s clean,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
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bsp; She took it, filled it with water, and when it was boiling put in the bottle and teat, and boiled them up. He watched her in amazement.
‘It’s got to be sterilised. It’s easier to do with special liquid or tablets. You can buy some tomorrow.’
She thought of Dan. Would he remember what to do if his baby needed feeding? Robert interpreted her grim expression as her being annoyed with him. He said coldly, ‘I repeat, I am sorry to have bothered you, but I didn’t have a lot to do with Freya when she was born.’
‘It might not be the reason he is crying; it’s just the most obvious suggestion.’ His coldness added more weight to her feelings of rejection, the painful picture of Dan struggling with his new baby.
‘I do hope it is,’ he said fervently. He stood with his back against one of the worktops and watched her mix up the formula. Dan would have done that, watched her doing it while somehow thinking he was doing it himself.
For weeks she had not mourned Dan as much as she was now. This baby, coupled with Robert, who was about Dan’s age, made her think of him too much – though Robert was playing the correct role of a grandfather not a father. Was Dan pacing around even now with a screaming child in his arms?
The silence between them stretched on. Robert broke it. ‘Thank you again for helping Freya when she turned up before Christmas. It’s all been rather a shock. I can’t quite come to grips with it.’
No doubt this was a prelude to complaints about the damage she had done to his beloved garden.
She said quickly, ‘It’s all worked out in the end. When was he born?’
‘Three days ago. I came down the day after I saw you at the McNairs’. Through my GP, I found her a private gynaecologist: she’s barely seen a doctor during the whole time. He thought it better to induce her, so there was none of that dashing in to hospital in the night. It was all very civilised.’ His expression indicated that it was after the birth that the civilization had stopped. It would get worse.
‘Now you are on your own, it’s not so easy.’ She shook the filled bottle and tested the heat of the milk on her inside wrist. She did it unconsciously, the skill still embedded in her. She was too busy fighting her demons about Dan to notice the admiration in Robert’s eyes.
‘Let’s see if this is what he wants.’ She went past him into the living room to Freya.
She handed her the bottle. Freya tried to get it in to the baby’s open mouth, but he screamed louder, twisting away from it. She burst into tears. ‘I can’t cope, I never thought it would be like this. I feel as though I’m sitting on barbed wire, and my boobs hurt – it’s all so awful!’ She howled.
Her tears bought back Sarah’s memories. She, too, had howled the first time. Her mother had told her it would get better, and then went off to Harrods. Dan had held her, looking fearful, out of his depth as Tim had lain between them, screaming and kicking his minuscule legs like a furious beetle upturned on its back. Firmly dismissing these thoughts, Sarah sat down beside Freya and took the baby from her. She gently ran the teat over his screaming mouth. He gulped, screamed some more, then grabbed it between his lips and started sucking. There was a glorious silence.
Sarah could feel the tension seep out of the room. Robert was looking at her in awe, as if she had achieved one of the greatest miracles of all time. He had one hand on Freya’s shoulder. Freya blew her nose fiercely and apologised for her tears.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Sarah said, ‘we all went through it. Especially the first time and you’re probably suffering from “baby blues”, a sort of weepy stage that often comes in a few days after giving birth, you’ll be fine tomorrow.’
The weight of the baby and his rhythmic sucking soothed her. Sarah sat there, looking out into the lighted garden. The curtains were not drawn, and she could see the plants and the broken trellis from where she sat. She wondered if she had killed the plants and tensed herself for his accusation.
Freya said, ‘Would you mind if I had a quick bath and washed my hair? I feel so grubby; I haven’t had a moment, and when I have I just collapse and try to sleep.’
‘Go ahead,’ Sarah said. The almost transparent eyelids of the child, threaded with tiny veins, flickered then closed as he continued to suck.
Robert sat down in a chair opposite her, blocking her view from the garden.
‘You have been most awfully kind,’ he started again. ‘Freya never let on either to me or her mother that she was having a baby. She’s so independent, you see, but now…’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, you can’t always be independent, can you?’
‘No. Having your first baby is one of the greatest changes to anyone’s life.’
‘I remember it,’ he said.
Sarah wondered what his wife had been like; tried to imagine him as the supporting young father, as Dan had been.
Robert said brusquely, ‘I can see this is the most awful bore for you. Shall I take over and let you get back to your house?’
There was an irritation in his voice that stung her. Her face must have been showing all the anger she felt for Dan. Before she could stop herself, she heard herself saying, ‘It’s not a bore at all, it’s just that my ex-husband has just had a baby with another woman and I can’t stop thinking about it. Hearing this baby cry makes his baby seem suddenly more real.’
‘I am so sorry.’ He made a move towards her, then obviously thought better of it and leant back in his chair. ‘If I had known, I wouldn’t have asked you, but… there’s no one else around at the moment.’
‘It’s fine.’ Her confession embarrassed her. ‘I will get used to it. I’ll have to.’
‘I must say, fatherhood is not something I’d want to take on again,’ Robert said. ‘I think there is a time for everything, and I’d rather be a grandfather than a new father now. I’d hate to say I felt too old, but I’ve got my life sorted as I want it to be, and another child would just ruin it.’
‘I don’t know if he planned it.’ She did not say she wondered if it was his at all.
‘Is the woman much younger? Has she had children?’ he asked.
‘She hasn’t had children. I suppose I can’t blame her for wanting one, but if only she’d chosen someone else to have it with.’ She remembered Dan and Robert were in league together over the house. She must be careful what she said, in case he used it against her.
He watched her, studying her face, as if wondering how much he could ask her. He said at last, ‘Do you still love him?’
His question troubled her. She glanced down at the baby, enjoying the warm weight of him close to her. Were all women programmed like this, feeling complete when they held a child in their arms?
He said, ‘Sorry, that was intrusive. I had no right to ask you.’
‘Old habits die hard,’ she said. ‘For twenty-four years I thought I was happily married to a man I loved and who loved me. It seems I was mistaken. Although my mind tells me that it is over, my emotions don’t seem to have got the message.’
‘I am sure you were not mistaken. Perhaps his perceptions changed. Maybe he felt time was passing him by, or just got caught up with this new woman and it went too far.’
‘If only he had talked about it! We could have got through it, instead of him just rushing off in a red sports car with this mousy woman.’ Her anger rose and spilt over. ‘If she’d been beautiful or clever or something better than me, I might understand. But she’s so plain,’ she burst out, then immediately felt ashamed of her outburst. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, ‘I suppose it’s her youth – I don’t have that. Look, he’s quiet now. I expect a midwife or someone like that will come and visit, help Freya with the feeding.’
‘I hope so.’ He got up and went and drew the curtains, and turning back to face her said, ‘Don’t be afraid to say what you feel, not in front of me anyway. My own father did the same, devastated my mother, all for some tart in the village. Once she’d got his money, she dumped him and ran off with someone her own age.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘If ever I fee
l tempted to go after some young thing, I remember that time – not that I’ve a wife to destroy, but it can look so ridiculous somehow.’ He blushed slightly. ‘I hate to be laughed at, made fun of, you know.’
The baby had finished the milk. He lay asleep in her arms, his even breath punctuated from time to time with tiny, shivering sobs still lingering after his outburst. There was an atmosphere of contentment, of ease, between them.
‘Dan doesn’t think he looks ridiculous, even though he can hardly get in and out of his low-slung car. He must have wanted something more, something I couldn’t give him.’ She wished she hadn’t said that. It sounded like she’d refused him sex, had a headache every bedtime. Most men would feel sympathy for a man in that situation.
Robert smiled. ‘Don’t beat yourself up over it. You probably just reached the end of the relationship. We all live so long now. Maybe he didn’t feel comfortable without the children?’
She hadn’t thought of it that way, running out of time with a relationship. Though maybe that was true – marriage and people changed as life went on; having babies, pursuing careers, children growing and leaving, she looked down at the sleeping baby, and then had their own children and so it went on. Dan obviously didn’t like the phase of their life when they were back alone again and hadn’t the patience to wait for grandchildren.
Robert said, ‘We are all fools, imagining others see us as we see ourselves. We may still feel young inside, even if it is obvious we are not. Anyway,’ he sat down again learning forward in his chair, as if to get closer to her, ‘another reason I try not to get involved with younger women is they do seem to want children. I don’t think I’m that great a father anyway.’
‘But Freya came to you.’
‘But she didn’t tell me she was pregnant until the end. She didn’t feel she could confide in me when things began to go wrong with her relationship. Now she insists she’ll be all right on her own, or at least she said that before the baby was born. She wants to return to France. She has a high-powered job there, but she’ll have to find somewhere different to live, and child-care.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m worried about her, but what can I do? She’ll only think I’m interfering with her life.’