by Fiona Gibson
The Hoover has such an effect that the carpet changes from dusky to startling pink, like cheap lipstick. Someone hammers on the door as if their life depends on it. I assume it’s Helen wanting her Hoover back, or someone from upstairs complaining about the frantic vacuuming noise. But it’s Charlie and I don’t know what he wants. He’s small for his age with pale wrists, like leeks. I let him in, not sure what a child of his age likes to eat or drink. I wonder what he’d make of an activity arch. “Is this your flat?” he asks. His voice is unnecessarily loud, possibly from making himself heard among the other children.
“Sort of,” I tell him. “It’s where I live.”
He stalks around the living room and peers at the microwave on the balcony. “Do you want that?” he asks.
“No, why, do you?”
“I could keep stuff in it. Can I go out?”
I let him onto the balcony, hoping he’s not thinking of trying some treacherous stunt on the railings. “Are you revorced?” he shouts back.
“No, I’m not divorced.”
“Does your baby have a dad?”
“He does,” I say patiently. “He just doesn’t live with us.” I sound like a book intended to help children through challenging times: I Don’t See Daddy Much But That’s Okay.
Charlie’s stopped listening. He’s marched back in, turned on the TV and is laughing gutsily as a cartoon girl with ginger pigtails wallops a boy with her schoolbag.
Jonathan wants to formalize things. He looms over me while I bathe Ben, watching as I slosh chunky limbs with a fluorescent pink sponge. He is too polite to comment on my shoddy paint job.
Charlie is in the living room, making a potion by bashing Space Invader corn snacks into a blend of tomato sauce and milk. He eats startling mixtures, jumbling food groups. Sometimes he shows up saying he “needs” cold pea and ham soup with a swirl of mayonnaise. I’ve found him daubing raw carrots with Marmite. He’s always chewing or crunching, sometimes simultaneously. His front teeth are graying where they meet the gums. He behaves like he’s pregnant.
Jonathan and I are supposed to be discussing arrangements but he’s staring at my wrist, wondering why I’m wearing a red, cheap-looking thing instead of the serious watch. It’s difficult with Charlie here, making grinding noises with a metal spoon. “We need to set up some kind of system,” whispers Jonathan.
“Why? You can see Ben whenever you like.”
There’s an irritable twitch about his lips. He says, “I’d like things to be more organized.”
“How about you have him at weekends?” I don’t want this, not really. Don’t want my weekends empty and babyless.
“It might be difficult, having Ben overnight. Billy’s staying with me. He’s off the rails. Went for a haircut and a quick cider afterward and next thing he’s having his stomach pumped.”
I lift Ben from the bath and wrap him in a towel with a hood. I wonder if Jonathan really minds about Billy. Someone to cook for. Another body in the house.
While I dress Ben in pajamas Jonathan examines antique sockets, and the kitchen sink plug hole, as if expecting something vile to spurt out. He has brought my post. In fact one is addressed to Ben with Little Lovelies in navy script on the back of the envelope. Inside is a cheque for Ben’s advertising jobs. I’m astounded by the amount. Jonathan plucks it from my fingers and says, “I’ll put this in his savings account,” as if I am considering squandering the lot on fancy moisturizers with gold particles in. “Will there be any more?” he asks.
“No. We’ve stopped all that. Anyway, the agency dropped us.”
Charlie looks up, licking the spoon menacingly. Jonathan teeters back. “You’re in denial,” he snarls at the door. “This pregnancy. You’re carrying on as if all this is normal.”
Spring arrives on April Fool’s Day. One day I’m wearing Christophe’s bird’s nest sweater, the next I’m sweating in my pink cardigan in the office of a heavily lipsticked woman with a beaky nose and an Australian accent. Catherine is setting up a new magazine. Eliza gave her my name, possibly to make up for the Jonathan episode, but more likely because she has decided I need to be out of the house more often.
“We’re not looking for the same old relationship shit,” says Catherine viciously from behind her bare desk. “Our readers are highly intelligent. They don’t care about pleasing men.” I don’t point out that she doesn’t have any readers yet. She says there are two vacant positions in the features department. She has misunderstood me; I can’t take a job. Not now. I breathe in, hoping she doesn’t look south of my neck. “I’m looking for some freelance work,” I explain.
“Fine, got any ideas?”
“I can think some up. I’ll send them to you. You see, I’ve been out of the country for a while.”
This seems to make me a little more interesting. She’s thinking L.A., New York, not a pimple of a village in Eastern France. “I like your stuff,” she announces. “Down-market trash but funny and sharp. I’ll call you.”
Before heading home I venture into Hamleys in search of a stimulating toy for a one-year-old. It’s Ben’s birthday tomorrow. Maud has already had hers, being one step ahead in every sense. Beth had her old doll’s house renovated, the seventies furnishings replaced with a more pared-down, Scandinavian look. Actually, Beatrice, the Swiss girl, did it. She’s settled in well. Beth says she’s very good with her hands.
The sale is on. Hamleys is heaving with sweating parents snatching cut-price Action Men with growling huskies. A woman with a rip in her tights is chasing her daughter up the escalator. A wizened boy with challenging eyes pokes a light saber up my skirt. I emerge giftless, reassuring myself that, at a year old, a child hasn’t figured out the concept of birthdays. How long can I get away with this? No present from his mother and little contact with his dad. At what stage does a child start demanding his own Action Man with husky and an adultsize male about the place?
When I pick up Ben from Helen he is engrossed in a satisfying game of snapping Charlie’s Lego towers. Charlie’s dad is eating a curry with the naan bread draped over the arm of the sofa. He smiles at me over his fork. He’s older and softer than Helen, and looks like he’d need a crane to hoist him from that sofa.
Charlie is chewing a pakora and decorating a square white cake with a red icing pen. “I’m drawing a tank,” he says, but it looks like the imprint of a jam sandwich.
My flat is too hot. I open the balcony door and let Charlie out to play with the microwave. He has brought the cake, and streamers, which he drapes over the brass wall lamps, sprinkling their fluted glass underskirts with silvery strands.
Jonathan arrives at 2:00 p.m. sharp with a flat blue parcel and a worried Adam’s apple. Helen and I carry food from the kitchen to the table: egg mayo sandwiches, animal biscuits with chocolate on their fronts, and Charlie’s cake. I open the balcony door to let out the egg smell. Jonathan plays with Ben on the floor, showing him the wooden puzzle he’s brought. It’s a Noah’s ark. Jonathan removes the animals and sits back, perhaps expecting Ben to replace them in the appropriate holes. Ben bites a wooden zebra. Jonathan snatches it from his mouth, causing Ben to bellow miserably. Jonathan blinks at the cake.
Beth arrives with Maud and Beatrice who wears her hair scraped to the side, secured by a schoolgirlish hair clip. “Would you like me to take charge of music and games?” Beatrice asks loudly. She is carrying a portable CD player. No one seems very keen on games. Charlie removes egg filling from a sandwich to smear on the chocolate animals. The other older kids—thoughtfully donated by Helen to make up the numbers—are demanding piggybacks from a girl of around Charlie’s age, but who looks like she was constructed in a shipyard.
“We need music,” says Beatrice, smiling like a head-mistress.
I only have one CD; the soul compilation from Eliza. My favorites are still at Jonathan’s. She puts on “Sex Machine.” James Brown. The shipyard girl giggles. “Maybe we won’t have music,” I say.
The party seems to last
forever. I keep going to the toilet to check my cheap watch in secret. “Awful, isn’t it?” sympathizes Beth, catching me creeping out of the bathroom.
“Is it? The children seem to be enjoying themselves.” The older kids are rapping each other with balloons. The shipyard girl has drawn on hers, making it The Devil.
“I mean the toilet thing,” says Beth. “The constantly going. That pressure on your bladder. How many weeks are you now?”
“Lost count,” I tell her. “Two thirds through, I think.”
She gives me a bizarre look and drifts away to separate Maud from the cake. The Genius of Bethnal Green has been walking for ages. She’s probably the earliest walker in the world, ever. Ben has been standing for what feels like a century. He’d be up on his feet, running mini marathons, if I’d paid proper attention to his diet.
Everyone except Jonathan leaves in a surge on the dot of four, clattering out like the flat’s on fire. Despite Beatrice’s clearing up efforts, the room is devastated. Jonathan stares at the pink carpet where the Noah’s ark animals are scattered. “This place, how can you live here?” he says. “Someone’s been sick on the stairs, have you seen it?”
“That’s not sick. Charlie was making a mixture. It must have got kicked over when—”
“And that kid,” he says. “Is he hyperactive or what?”
“He’s just a boy.”
“Doesn’t his mother watch what he eats? He practically had all those biscuits, and took the sandwiches to bits—I watched him. Doesn’t she care? Doesn’t she police him?”
When he’s gone the flat feels calm and unusually spacious, like an empty school hall.
I am swelling. Bigger and rounder than last time with a bump expanding like pizza dough, stretching right round my back. I wear black dungarees from an army surplus shop and enormous white knickers called Super-pants. I eat five meals a day, all devoid of flavoring, and wake several times every night, needing a pee. The toilet makes a strange booming sound after each flush.
Ben approves of my bigness. He sprawls on me, grabbing fistfuls of breast, wiping the sweat off my face. It’s blisteringly hot, with the kind of fierce sunlight Eliza travels to Antigua for. My parents write to explain that they are still in the Roussillon district and have fallen for a dear little grain mill which they hope to purchase when the sale of the Vanvey house goes through. The purchaser is a local woman, and they’ve given her an excellent deal, taking into account that her son has done much of the renovation work. The woman—Sylvia, my mother calls her—intends to turn it into a small hotel. We could have done that, my mother writes, but who do we have to help us? Sylvia’s son, the handyman, is such a keen young man. Not a drifter like you. He asked a lot about you, Nina. Wondered if you were coming back. When we told him you’d taken a flat in London he looked quite cross which is unusual, as he’s usually ever so pleasant.
Charlie likes shopping with me. He pushes the buggy with reedy arms, wobbling dangerously close to dusty curbs. The area is what Garie would call “improving.” There are families with wealthy jaws and children called Hannah and Max. A vegan café and yoga center have opened. But there is still a smattering of pound shops and mysterious Turkish bars with blue lights and men who hover in doorways, smoking, and a frightening pub with a wet carpet where you might have your eyeballs removed for ordering a lemonade. One night, an angry man tumbled out of the pub, and ranted into the intercom that he knew I was there, “and you’ll be sorry next time, Shirley.”
Charlie carries my shopping upstairs, explaining that he’d like a boiled egg, and do I have any of that marmalade made out of limes? I let him in and pour him an orange juice. “Do you want another baby?” he shouts.
“Yes,” I say, “what makes you ask that?”
“My mum,” he says, “she’s got a thing in her from the doctor so she can’t have any more children. She’s not allowed. There’s something wrong with her blood.”
He falls back onto my new blue corduroy sofa. Jonathan insists I buy whatever I need, helping myself from our current account. He appears every few days to inspect the flat and play Noah’s Ark puzzle with Ben and steal sly looks at my belly.
She arrives three weeks early at 2:27 a.m. My daughter is so keen to be born that she’s here, in my arms, with only Helen to help us. The midwife arrives, and I am whisked off to hospital, apparently in shock. Helen has agreed to look after Ben. He’ll wake up, knowing nothing about a new sister or what happened on the living room carpet where he plays with his toys. You can get up to all sorts while your baby sleeps.
Jonathan visits the ward to remind me that I’m in shock and brings Ben, who wears stiff-looking tartan dungarees and his fringe cut in a sharp line. Ben tries to break and enter the bedside cupboard, removing the chocolate digestives supplied by Helen and a book donated by Beth about managing postnatal depression without prescription drugs.
Jonathan holds the baby but gives her back to me when she cries. He perches on the edge of my bed as if testing its springiness. “How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Fine. I want to go home.”
“No,” he says, “you might feel fine, but you’re not. It’s your hormones. They’re boosting you temporarily. In a day or two you’ll crash.”
Ben cries when Jonathan carries him out of the ward. “I’m going home,” I shout after them.
23
First Steps
I’m in Jonathan’s flat and it’s just the same except there’s the baby, who mews daintily from a carrycot, and Billy, who doesn’t. He has grown an extra layer, been fattened up by Jonathan. He looks less likely to wake up in Ongar and play with the frogs.
I sleep with the baby in Jonathan’s bed. He remains politely at the furthest edge. He could be in another continent. When the baby wakes, Jonathan watches me feeding her. He arranges the pillows so I’m comfortable and fetches me water from the kitchen. Although he may not have the equipment, there’s lots a new father can do to support his breast-feeding partner.
In the morning he whispers, “Don’t worry. Billy will find himself a place, now you’re back.”
“Nina! I’ve just shot down an airplane.” Charlie is playing in the stairwell, firing an invisible gun at cracks in the ceiling. He has broken up for the summer holidays and clearly intends to spend seven weeks alternating between his flat, with its hordes of children, and mine, with a more manageable two. He’s glad I’m back. He missed playing with the microwave. He clatters in and grabs Ben’s hand, intent on locating his walking button.
Catherine calls to report that prelaunch research indicates that potential readers are baffled by her proposal with its intelligent features and political analysis and would prefer the same old emotional shit. “Like to do a piece?” she says in a tired way. “We’re thinking of—Can Your Relationship Survive an Affair? You know the drill. Get some psychologist biddy to harp on about communication, good stuff coming from bad, all that guff.” She will pay me an astronomical fee which will convert neatly into a stereo. I might even buy another CD.
Charlie helps me bathe Ben by lobbing stackable plastic boats into the tub which bob among Little Squirts froth. When he’s gone I feed the baby to sleep and bash out the affair feature without coming up for air.
My parents show up with startlingly brown faces and a construction kit consisting of rusting metal components intended for a child of around twelve. Mum shows me pictures of a clapped-out barn and says, “You must come next time we’re at the mill. It needs work, admittedly, but there’s huge potential to convert it into a, er, isn’t there, Jack?”
Dad holds the baby as if she’s a fragile fortune cookie with a scary message inside. Mum flicks her eyes around the electric fire’s plastic coals. “You’re just here temporarily,” she says. “Until you’ve found your feet.”
“No, it’s where I live.”
Charlie saunters in without knocking, stopping dead when he meets my father’s corduroys. “When are they going?” he asks.
Mum star
es at the closed front door long after he’s gone. “I suppose,” she sighs, “you can live with us.”
I have started to like cleaning. There is so little of the flat, so few murky crevices, that it’s ridiculously easy. I have stocked up on products with spray nozzles and even a Hoover with a special attachment for upholstery. I intend to use my cleaning time to think up feature ideas for Catherine but realize, when the job’s finished and the bathroom smells pleasingly citrusy, that I haven’t had one work-related thought.
When I do work, it’s at night, when Ben and the baby are asleep. The occasional personality clash tumbles out of the wet-carpet pub. It’s around 2:00 a.m. when Jonathan calls, his voice pulpy with alcohol. It’s all in the past. “Pasht,” he says.
“Has something happened?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. A deeper male voice prompts him. There’s a groan from an accordion.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I say.
“Yes, there is. The modeling, what does it matter? Great idea!” He burps and apologizes.
“That’s all over now.”
“I’m sorry,” he rants on, “about the country. You don’t want to move. That’s fine. Sorry.”
“For what?” I ask.
“For getting you into all this—”
“Please,” I say, “can’t you come over tomorrow? We’ll talk then. You’re just upset. We don’t have to—”
He’s sorry for letting me go to France.
For not making me stay.
For criticizing my flat.
And being sexually predictable.
Sorry for not letting me come to his mother’s funeral. And trying to bully me into staying at that B&B. Did I know it wasn’t quite true, the way he described those holidays? His dad was there. He’d invent sales trips and leave his picturesque family behind. This man would spend a week in Scotland with Constance and a son who wasn’t allowed to say Dad. The man was a family friend, that was all. Jonathan was told to call him Tony.