Babyface

by Fiona Gibson

  I like being on the roof. It feels open and away from everything. Decades ago, someone tried to spruce things up with terra-cotta pots, now housing withered stumps, and wooden troughs, containing soil and bird droppings. There are no railings. The cat leaps up through the opening and prowls toward us, eyeing Ben’s bottle greedily. It circles me, closing in. I delve into the bag of foodstuffs I’ve gleaned from Eliza’s kitchen. “Help yourself to anything,” she’d said grandly. I found a greasy-skinned apple and a hot cross bun, possibly left over from Easter. I break off a chunk and fling the rest over the edge of the roof. It hits the ground with a crack.

  I tap in Jonathan’s work number on my mobile. “He doesn’t work weekends,” says a middle-aged voice. “Who is this?”

  “His wife,” I blurt out.

  In search of more food, I totter down the rickety stairs, clutching Ben tightly to my chest. And I hear them: muffled giggles from Eliza’s room. An occasional thud, and a bed creaking painfully. The creaks quicken, and there’s a grunt, like you make when you finally get the lid off a jar of gherkins. Then a whisper:

  Do you think she heard?

  No, she’s up on the roof, feeding the baby.

  Is she staying long?

  Maybe. It’ll be okay. She’s my friend.

  If I stay, I’ll have to go back and collect the cot—we never got around to buying a travel cot—or have Ben with me on the blow-up bed in Eliza’s spare room. Baby-care warns that a child’s sleep patterns are easily disrupted: don’t be too adventurous when holidaying during your child’s first year. Will your temporary surroundings offer the facilities you need? Decamping to an unfamiliar environment can cause unnecessary stress.

  I can’t stay, even though we’re all pretending this is an ordinary Sunday morning, as if I’ve just popped in. I don’t pop in anywhere. My diary is scrawled with times and places for castings and jobs, plus deadlines and must-remembers. On the mum circuit people rarely pop in. I have developed an aversion to popping. The one time Felt Lady appeared at our door, blocking the light with her hefty shoulders, I made her coffee with cold water so she’d leave quickly.

  Dale asks which paper I’d like and returns later with an armful of newsprint, but not the one I asked for. He’s wearing greasy jeans and a hippie top with a tassel scenario at the neckline. He distributes newspaper sections (him: main paper; Eliza: color mag; me: travel, money and business and any other bits no one’s interested in). Ben claws the sport section. I read a feature about honeymoons: Almond Beach Resort, Bermuda, offering its own private shoreland and forty acres of landscaped gardens for a secluded break. Ideal for unwinding after hectic wedding preparations. Couples only.

  Dale reads the foreign news pages, frowning and feigning grownup-ness. Eliza studies a feature on sweaters constructed from knitted squares. No one seems concerned with eating, though Eliza crunches the occasional Hula Hoop. She is still wearing the black silk robe. Dale smells like the underside of a teenage boy’s duvet. The tea Eliza made me has brown scum on top. Ben sleeps on my lap now, done in by the electric fire’s dry heat.

  The buzzer doesn’t wake him. Eliza opens the door. Her robe thing is bunched up in its tie belt, showing her mottled thighs. Jonathan appears to have narrowed. Dale looks over his paper and nods amiably, as if another friend has popped in. So much popping. In an attempt to bring her robe thing to order, Eliza succeeds only in opening it at the front, showing high-waisted maroon knickers and a burning desire to be somewhere else.

  Jonathan and I are on the roof because there’s nowhere else to go. “What happened to your hand?” Jonathan asks.

  The bandage is filthy and bloodstained and the hedgehog stickers are peeling off. “I cut it with a breadknife,” I explain. For a moment he looks aghast, like he might topple off the roof. “Accidentally,” I add. And I take my chance: “Can’t we forget this? We’re getting married in two weeks. We have stuff to sort out. Did you ever think it would be so complicated?”

  He looks confused, as if a mad stranger has accused him of stashing his domestic waste in their bin and is threatening to call the police. “Like photos,” I charge on. “We don’t want a formal thing, not that soft-focus couple in a champagne glass thing, but shouldn’t we put someone in charge, like Dale? Can he come, is that okay? He’s not on the list, it’s just started with them, but—”

  He walks away from me. At least, with this being a roof, there’s a limit to how far he can go. I follow him, glimpsing a jumble of rooftops and small, unkempt gardens and, far below, kids booting a football against the No Ball Games sign.

  “The photographs,” I remind him.

  He turns to me. He looks tired and unemotional.

  “Nina,” he says, “I can’t marry you. I don’t even know who you are.”

  17

  Traveling With Your Baby

  Is Ben sick? Has something happened? Do you realize how unprofessional this makes us look as an agency? You’re duty bound to show up for jobs. It’s for national TV. Extremely high profile for you, and for us. I don’t know, Nina.

  I ask what it is she doesn’t know.

  I don’t know if we can represent Ben anymore.

  At the edge of the ferry’s soft play area, a woman with her hair gathered up into a wiry topknot shows me photographs of her children. They are creased passport photos. It’s not necessary to show me as the real children are here: bounding from a PVC arch to a padded cylinder which they lie on and attempt to roll, with the smallest sibling squealing underneath.

  “Stop that, Nathan,” snaps the father from behind a creased paperback with barbed wire on the cover.

  “On holiday with your little boy?” asks the woman.

  “Just for a few days. My husband can’t get time off.”

  She tweaks her topknot with burgundy fingernails. “Shame to be away from his dad. Beautiful little boy.”

  Ben rummages happily in the ball pool. Jonathan disapproves of this kind of play. He thinks bright colors overstimulate and worries about festering sandwiches and nappies in ball pools. He once said that such play facilities are for parents who can’t think of anything more constructive to do with their kids.

  “He might join us later,” I tell her.

  “Well, that’s good.” She studies Ben. “He doesn’t look like you, does he? Is there more of your husband in him?”

  I nod.

  “Lucky you,” she cackles, snapping a four-finger Kit Kat to distribute among her children. “We’re off to Disneyland, Paris. Kids have been badgering me for years.”

  “They’re not real, they’re just cartoons,” retorts a stringy girl in a faded vest, dangling from the PVC arch.

  “Yes they are,” says her brother. “You see them in the adverts, walking about.”

  “So how come you get Mickey in America and Disneyland, Paris, like two places at once?”

  “It’s like Father Christmas,” says a younger girl with cherubic curls.

  “Time difference,” says the boy, tugging at his crotch as if he requires the loo. “Like, Florida’s five hours behind us, stupid.”

  The older girl plummets from the arch in a jangle of scab-elbowed arms and thin hair. “They’re dwarfs,” she announces, jumping up. “Little people dressed up.”

  “I know,” rages her brother. “Fuck off.”

  “Stop that, Nathan,” says the father, jutting his nose farther into his book.

  We have lunch together at one long table smattered with the previous customers’ sauce sachets and soiled cutlery and a forgotten guidebook to Walks in Eastern France. Taking pity on me—though she has three times as many children—the woman says she’ll order for me and returns with a Cumberland sausage, coiled like a glistening worm. Ben, already accustomed to a limited diet, makes do with mashed banana. The woman introduces herself as Linda and offers me her last finger of Kit Kat.

  It’s a calm crossing. Linda’s family argues about how long the queues will be at Disneyland. The oldest daughter asks to hold Ben a
nd plants noisy kisses on his forehead, leaving pink imprints. “That’s not right,” she snaps at her brother. He is slumped over a coloring book, tongue poked out in concentration. “Pluto’s got down ears,” she nags. “They don’t stick up like that.”

  “He’s running,” huffs the boy.

  While Linda explains that the ears are probably bouncing up, rather than permanently up, I marvel at her patience until my stomach takes over and saliva seeps into my mouth. There’s no reason to feel sick. The sea is an endless flat puddle. Perhaps it’s the smell of the fuel and the kitchens or the fragment of Eliza’s hot cross bun that’s only just forcing its way out of my stomach. But I’m on my feet, leaving Ben in the arms of an eleven-year-old, and running up scuffed metal stairs to the edge of the boat where the Cumberland sausage, a finger of Kit Kat and a rotten bellyful of guilt splatter down into the English Channel.

  “Take the car,” Jonathan had insisted, “if you’re set on going to that awful place of your parents.” He didn’t say don’t go. All he added was, “You have no idea how to get there. Are you seriously relying on this?” He clutched my father’s map, drawn in marker pen on a paper serviette. The ink had blotched where he’d pressed too hard.

  An open case lay on the bed. Jonathan played with Ben in the living room, singing and pretending to be happy. His voice sounded tight as elastic. He looked into the bedroom and stared at the case. “You’ll be back in plenty of time, won’t you?” he said.

  “For what?” I asked lightly. I tucked socks into the corners of the case, not looking at him.

  “The wedding.”

  “I thought it was off. You said—”

  “I was just mad. The shock was bad enough. Then I started counting the lies. The times you’d dragged him round town and—”

  “We’re not getting married,” I said, shutting the case. He followed me into the living room. I wondered whether to take toys. What Ben might need for entertainment. Maybe being away would be enough. Change of scenery. Wasn’t that the whole point of holidays?

  Jonathan perched on the suede cube, observing me. I lifted the case but he took it from me and carried it to the car. I had Dad’s map in my purse and wondered if it bore any resemblance to the road system in Eastern France. Jonathan’s smile was wide and brave. “Just a silly little ad,” he said, trying for a laugh. He loaded my suitcase into the boot then felt in his pocket and handed me a small navy box. Inside was a watch.

  “What’s this for?” I asked. It looked like a man’s watch. Silver face, without numbers. A serious watch.

  “For telling the time,” he said. “I planned to give it to you the night we went out, as a prewedding thing.”

  A prewedding thing for what? To thank me for marrying him? I put it on because I didn’t know what else to do.

  I wanted to ask him something. How many lies he’d counted.

  “Have fun,” he said, turning back to the flat.

  Linda scoops up the soft toys, coloring books and windup plastic crocodiles with snapping mouths that litter the table but miraculously fit into her zebra-striped bag. The dad slaps his jeans pocket where the passports should be.

  “In here,” says Linda, patting the bag’s outside pouch. I check the zip compartment of my bag for ours: mine, the photo taken four years ago, before motherhood made me look craggier than my own parents. I’m grinning in a fresh, expectant way; I look like a toddler. And Ben’s: a baby’s smile, the mouth a black hole, with my hands holding him in the correct position in the booth. I’d applied for Ben’s passport in good time for our honeymoon. That was before the B&B thing.

  “Enjoy your holiday,” says Linda, poised to shepherd her offspring down to the bowels of the ferry and into the car. She stops for a moment, gives me a look. “Will you be okay? You look a bit green.”

  “Sea sickness,” I say. “I always get it.”

  “Poor thing. You’d have been better on Eurostar.”

  I can’t tell her the truth; that some ridiculous part of me liked the idea of standing on the deck of a ship, watching my old world shrink to nothing.

  “Mum,” says Linda’s cherubic daughter, “my arse is itching.”

  Linda laughs and ushers her away. “Funny,” she says, turning back, “but I know I’ve seen Ben somewhere before. Are you sure we haven’t met?”

  I am so unused to driving on the other side of the road that I lumber around roundabouts as if I’m on my first lesson. I have no need to drive, not usually. My world is generally small enough to be covered on foot. I never drive to auditions; finding a parking space is too fraught. When it’s a job, we’re collected and deposited back home in cars with buttery leather upholstery and inaudible engines. In these cars I’ve worried about polluting the air-conditioned environment, just by exhaling.

  I check Ben in the rearview mirror. His expression is bright and expectant: he’s looking forward to this impromptu holiday. It’s like he knows this is France. The beginning of something.

  The car smells as fresh and unsoiled as those posh account cabs, even though Jonathan has owned it for several years. He cleans it every Sunday morning, raking the seats with a minivacuum device. Ben is allowed only milk—no snacks—in the car.

  After three hours on the road he is no longer prepared to tolerate the gaping cavern of his stomach. The whine starts up, becoming heartier as I fail to respond. He lashes his head from side to side, trying to bite at his car seat straps. I pop in the song tape from Beth’s package. She called me on my mobile at Eliza’s and insisted on coming over. I didn’t want them to meet. You know when two departments of your life won’t mix. They’ll just curdle.

  Beth and Eliza sized each other up in an instant, quickly concluding that they were of different species and not bothering to communicate. Beth hugged me with cranked-up grief and pressed the pink tissue-wrapped package into my hands. Apart from the tape, there was a sleepsuit for Ben. “It’s fleecy inside, for warmth,” Beth explained. “Look after him, won’t you?” And she squeezed me again, saying, “It doesn’t have to come to this.”

  The tape perks up Ben for almost a minute. Then the wailing kicks off again and no posh lady crooning once I caught a fish alive will convince him that life is worth living. I pull in at services and stopper his mouth with the milk he half drank on the ferry, and which is now fermenting beautifully. Could it have turned into cheese or even alcohol? At least it will soothe him. Didn’t the lady with all those coats instruct me to add brandy to his nighttime bottle?

  Ben’s blanket, rolled into a fat sausage on his lap, props the bottle to the perfect height. I drive on, imagining Jonathan rapping at the passenger window and shouting, “Is this how you feed him? Is this what Babycare tells you to do?” Never leave your baby unattended with a bottle. Dispose of heated milk after one hour. Be sure to sterilize your baby’s bottles and teats until his first birthday. Never take your baby to a damp, decrepit hovel—Away From His Dad—unless you wish to encourage respiratory problems, in which case you have no right to be in sole charge of a vulnerable human being.

  I manage to negotiate Chatillon but from that point Dad’s map lets me down. The village, Vanvey, is marked, and the house indicated by a think bubble splodgily drawn around it, but there is no line connecting it to Chatillon. It’s raining now, and dark. I pull in at the roadside and study the serviette.

  Ben makes sleepy murmurings in the back. The bottle has fallen from his mouth and lies empty on the blanket. I wonder why Dad missed out this crucial road. When he sent me the serviette, along with the key—a chunky lump of rusting metal—there were no instructions or even a good luck message. I have no idea how the village might be connected to the rest of Eastern France. All I have is a map (unfinished) and a serious five-inch key.

  Ben mumbles dreamily, back in some cozy cot world where there’s a freezer stuffed with organic delights. I nibble a torpedo roll I bought on the ferry. Maybe this is where we’ll end up; mother and son in the car. People live in cars, even with children. Bei
ng trapped in his seat may hamper his gross motor development but it would do for now. Until I can think of something better.

  A car passes, its outline smudged in the rain. It pulls up a few yards ahead. The driver’s door opens. My back teeth set together. I keep perfectly still, like a child playing hide and seek, without hiding.

  Someone bends at the window, head tilted sideways. I open it a fraction. Eyes peer in, the lids buttered with glittery stuff visible even in the dark. I wind the window down fully. “You’re lost?” says the woman, shivering in a black evening dress with an embroidered cardigan on top.

  I nod and poke Dad’s serviette at her. “I’m looking for Vanvey. This house, at the edge of the village.” Not the time for schoolgirl French: and what can I remember when I need it? Je voudrais une tasse de café. The woman peers at the map, running her tongue around her teeth. Her perfume wafts thickly into the car. “You don’t know it,” I say.

  “I do,” she says. “You can follow me, we’re going that way.”

  “Do you know the house? It’s old, and it doesn’t have a number. I think it’s kind of…ruined.”

  “I know this house,” she says, casting Ben a sympathetic look. “It is bad, very bad. Can I show you the way to a nice hotel?”

  In the dark, Vanvey amounts to a huddle of sturdy stone houses and a small shop with its shutters down: there is no indication of what it might sell. Soon we run out of village. Round a precarious bend, the woman toots her horn. I take it as my signal to pull into a track on the right and follow its curve to a cobbled area next to a low building. It’s so dark, I can’t make out whether I’ve arrived at the front, back, or some crumbling out-house. Leaving Ben sleeping in the car, I prowl its walls in search of a door.

  Dad’s key fits stiffly into the lock. The door opens heavily, and I’m hit by the smell of wet dishcloth. The light switch is the old-fashioned kind with a knob at its tip and a firm click. I flick it on quickly, as if that will minimize risk of sparking or electric shock. I creep round the first room, which might be a kitchen. Uncarpeted stairs twist their way up to dank rooms in the eaves. Upstairs, no lights seem to work. Enough moonlight struggles through gunked-up windows to pick out the outline of a bed, unmade, and a stern-looking wardrobe with one door lolling open. I gather Ben from the car, feel my way upstairs and, without undressing either of us, pull him towards me beneath a rumple of moss-scented bedspread.