by Sue Watson
‘Oh, I wondered why Saff had left those in the buggy,’ Dan said, standing up. ‘Now I know.’
Clover had stopped crying, and was looking up at me, her eyes trying to focus, as I automatically rocked her gently. Dan wiped himself down and headed for the water to wash away the baby detritus as Clover and I looked at each other.
‘Well, you picked your timing, didn’t you?’ I said to her, losing myself in her big brown eyes. It’s a cliché to say rosebud mouth, but that’s just what it was, a little pink rosebud. It reminded me of Emma when she was a baby – the tiny, upturned nose, the unbelievable lightness when you lifted her from her cot. And the unbelievable heaviness of a full nappy, I reminded myself, trying to focus less on the wonderful bits and remember just how hard this baby journey was.
‘How did you do that?’ Dan’s voice suddenly cut into my thoughts.
I looked down. ‘I’ve done it before,’ I smiled.
‘Sit with us,’ he suddenly said. ‘I want you to get to know Clover.’
That’s what I was scared of. I was already beginning to feel that connection, where you want to protect them from anything and everything. I was perimenopausal, not maternal, how on earth was this happening? I couldn’t let myself fall for her, she wasn’t mine to love.
‘I won’t sit with you, if you don’t mind. But I think she’s too warm, you need to get her out of the heat for a bit.’ I was feeling her forehead, looking around for somewhere he could take her under shade.
‘Oh right, but she’s got cream on,’ he said, like that was all she needed. ‘Factor sixty, total sunblock,’ he offered.
‘Yeah, that’s great, but it won’t keep her cool. It doesn’t matter how much sunblock you put on, you have to be aware of a baby’s temperature.’
‘Oh, Saff said to find somewhere sheltered, but I thought she was fussing.’
‘Well, she wasn’t,’ I said, hating her and envying her and agreeing with her all at once, this woman I’d never even met. ‘There’s more to having a baby than sitting her on a beach, telling her all about your surfing prowess,’ I smiled.
‘How long have you been watching?’ he said, smiling.
‘Watching, me? I wasn’t… I’m not some stalker, I just caught sight of you as I… Look, it was long enough to know you needed rescuing. Just get her in the shade so you’re not in trouble if Saffron turns up,’ I said, pointing to a coffee shop in the distance.
‘Saffron’s not here, she’s in Perth, remember? It’s my time with Clover.’
‘Oh well, whatever,’ I said like it didn’t matter – when it so did. I was just double-checking.
‘I can’t get all her stuff and carry her too,’ he said. ‘Will you come with us to the coffee shop so I don’t drop her?’
I knew he was just saying this to make me go with him. Thing is, I really wanted to hold her a bit longer. I liked the feel of her babyness, the smell of suncream and soap – I also wanted to look into his eyes. So against my better judgement, I agreed to help him.
I set off quickly with Clover, keen to get her out of the sun as soon as possible, effortlessly picking up my bag, sunglasses and guidebook, and throwing my towel under my free arm along the way. I’d got this. I held her gently, she was so precious, and I looked at her again, marvelling at her perfection, her lightness. It seemed like yesterday that Emma and Rosie had been as tiny as this.
Dan followed us with the buggy and baby paraphernalia and in the few minutes it took to walk to shelter, I felt a rush of love and nostalgia. It surprised me to feel such strong emotions. And had I been younger and things had been different, Clover might have been mine. I’d always wanted another child, but it had never happened again for me and Craig, because babies just turn up sometimes – or not. As a mother of one you only get to do things once, and because it’s your first time the worry smothers much of the joy. But a second child, or a grandchild, comes along and shows you just what you missed, and holding this little one was making me miss my own.
Arriving at the coffee shop, the air con like cool water on our faces, I sat with Clover in my arms and waited for Dan. It was odd to see him earlier, the free-spirited surfer boy now a slightly fretting father. But his smile when he saw her, that wide-open dimpled sunshine smile as he looked into her face, almost broke my heart.
‘Daddy’s here,’ I said, surprised at the tears springing to my eyes. The tenderness in his voice, the softness in his face – this was a Dan I’d never seen before and it was quite lovely. No more carefree drinking, no more running away, I thought, as he touched her cheek and asked about her temperature. ‘She’s cooler now,’ I said, touching her forehead. ‘But this is a completely new look for you,’ I smiled, pulling out a chair for him as he returned with the buggy, almost running over a woman’s sandalled feet before parking it awkwardly.
‘Yeah,’ he laughed, taking out more muslin squares and putting one on his head. ‘The ladies love the whole dad image,’ he said, modelling it.
‘I’m sure they do,’ I laughed as he wiped his face with it, then offered the now-sweaty square to me.
‘No, thanks,’ I smiled. ‘Do you really think either me or Clover would want that after you’ve wiped your hot grimy face with it?’
He looked at it and laughed, slightly breathlessly, obviously tired from pushing the buggy in the heat.
‘You’ve got erm… some sick on your… chest,’ he said, vaguely pointing in the direction of my left breast.
‘Not quite the look I was after,’ I laughed. ‘I think there’s a definite theme developing for me on this Sydney trip, isn’t there, Clover sweetie?’ I said gently into her face. I swear she smiled at me. ‘Dan, look… she smiled,’ I said.
‘Yeah, you’re a baby whisperer, Faye. I can’t get her to be quiet like that once she starts that screeching thing.’
‘You’re a new dad and babies can often sense the panic. It makes them panic,’ I said, unable to take my eyes from her.
Dan’s phone was now ringing: ‘Oh shit, it’s the café…’ he said, picking up and having a conversation with someone about a delivery of seafood. ‘You need to speak to Shane at the docks,’ he was saying. ‘I can’t… I’m with Clover and I… Oh, look, I’ll do it, just get on with the service. I’ll sort it.’ He clicked off, then turned to me, ‘It’s the café, they…’
‘Yeah, I know, seafood order…’
He nodded. ‘The crayfish have gone awol, I have to ring…’
‘Shane?’
He laughed. ‘Yeah, won’t be a minute,’ he said absently, and punching numbers out on his phone, he walked out of the coffee shop and stood outside to have the conversation. Meanwhile, I sat with Clover in my arms as she slept, and watched as Dan waved his arms around outside and had what looked like a very intense conversation with Shane about lost crayfish. This went on for some time, and I sat there – literally, holding the baby. And I suddenly had a moment and wondered what life with Dan would be like now. The joy of my relationship with him was that it had always been a little selfish – we’d enjoyed decadent weekends away, we indulged each other, spent time caring, loving. This would now be a very different life than the one I’d envisaged, and if I wasn’t careful, I would fall for this little one. Looking down at her, I asked myself if this was what I really wanted.
Eventually Dan returned, and after some small talk about crayfish, I gently, and reluctantly, transferred Clover back to him.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, like I’d just handed him a ticking bomb.
‘Returning her to her daddy, I don’t want to get too attached.’
‘Please, Faye… get attached. Get so attached that you stay here forever and even if I can’t make you stay, she will.’
I felt a little shimmer of pleasure at the word ‘forever’, but at the same time I was aware that this wasn’t the forever I’d planned.
Dan smiled. ‘Lemonade?’ he said, and I nodded, as he called over the waitress. She seemed a bit surprised to be beckoned over as there
was a big sign saying ‘order at the counter’ and was about to inform him of this when I saw the change in her face as she looked into his eyes. I could see her transform before me, from stroppy jobsworth to waitress princess, immediately under his spell.
Look away, love, I thought, but it was too late, before she knew it she was taking our order and rushing off for iced lemonades and cake, going above and beyond the call of duty and also warming a baby bottle for the beautiful man on table four. She didn’t even notice me, until she returned with the milk and lemonades, and told Dan longingly he was so lucky to have such a beautiful baby. I could see the confusion on her face as she finally took me in. The baby was darker-skinned than both of us but I wondered if she felt I was too old to be the baby’s mother… or Dan’s partner. There you go again, I thought, old insecurities slowly emerging – this wasn’t the real Faye, but sometimes the odd residue from the past still needed wiping away. You can make changes to yourself and your life, but you have to be vigilant or they come marching back and there were still occasions when I felt too old, too fat, too insignificant. I guess a lifetime with indifferent Craig and his perfect pipes had taken their toll.
‘So you’re thinking about diving?’ Dan said, looking at the guidebook propped in my bag. He was handing me the bottle, which I took and automatically went into mother mode again.
‘Yes, I figured that I’m here, so I might as well make the most of it. I was thinking about a trip to Melbourne too.’ I was concentrating on Clover’s feeding.
‘Melbourne?’ he said, just as his phone pinged a text and took him away again. ‘Oh, Shane says the crayfish are en route,’ he smiled.
‘Hurrah for the crayfish,’ I sighed, as his phone pinged once more.
‘Oh, it’s Saff… She’s delayed, not sure when she’ll be back now. That’s a shame, I was going to ask if you fancied dinner.’
‘Never mind,’ I said, not resenting the baby, but feeling a bit miffed that Saff had done me out of an evening with Dan.
‘No, we still could. We could get a takeaway, eat it at the flat…’
‘Will Saffron be there?’ I asked, thinking what an awkward threesome that would be.
‘Yeah, when she eventually gets back. I have to stay with Clover until Saff gets back. Saff’d be okay with you being there.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ I said, looking down at Clover and shutting this ridiculous idea down before it seeded. After a few seconds I looked up to see he was texting. Bloody hell, it was worse than being with Emma! I felt like just walking out, and was about to do just that when he looked up and remembered I was there and he tried desperately to get back to where we were, pre-text.
‘So, Melbourne?’ he asked.
‘I hear there are great restaurants,’ I said, calming down a little. He couldn’t help it if work and Saffron needed to contact him, he had a full life, and when he was in the UK, he only had the deli and me.
‘Yeah, the restaurants are amazing… Melbourne’s become a real gastronomic hotspot. Some of Australia’s best restaurants are there,’ he said, suddenly coming alive. ‘There’s this amazing drive along the coast, all the way from here to Melbourne – we did it once with my parents,’ he sighed. ‘I was only a kid, but I’ll never forget it. We went swimming at Hyams Beach, it’s got the whitest sand in the world and we stopped off at the forest at Victorian Alps,’ he smiled at the memory. ‘Oh, and we saw fairy penguins on Philip Island… Amazing!’
That sounded perfect, and for a microsecond I allowed myself to think of the two of us driving down the coast, top down, the wind in our hair.
‘I wish I could come with you,’ he started to say.
‘Yes, but you’ve got so much else going on… I don’t suppose you have the time,’ I said, hoping against hope he did.
‘No, I guess not.’ There was a shadow of disappointment across his face. ‘I can take a few days off with some forward planning, but can’t really leave Clover,’ he added, sipping from his lemonade and looking around the café. ‘Saffron’s all over the place at the moment. I don’t know what’s got into her. We did a rota and everything, but she just keeps going off.’
I nodded – I didn’t want to get into a conversation about Saffron or her fitness to be a mother, it wasn’t my call. But hearing about her made me feel even more protective towards Clover.
‘It’s nice here,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Is your café bigger than this?’ I was still a little hurt that he hadn’t taken me there when I’d arrived. I understood why now, he wanted to tell me about Clover first, but I still felt excluded from his dream, his life. There was a distance between us and while he was still coming and going from the same apartment as Saffron there always would be, because I couldn’t go to his home. I’d been in Sydney for almost a week now and I’d seen neither his home nor the café.
‘Our café’s bigger, yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m really pleased, you know?’ He was looking down at Clover feeding from the bottle I was holding. ‘It’s hard work, but I love it even more now this little one’s here, she’s given me a reason to keep going. Clover’s gonna work there one day, aren’t you, sugar?’ he was touching her face as I held her, and my heart just unfurled like a flower filmed at speed.
‘I told you about babies, didn’t I?’ I said.
‘Yeah, they grip your heart with their tiny fingers and never let go.’ His eyes were misty and I thought he might cry, so I put on my Mary Poppins voice so I didn’t start blubbing. I’d made enough of a spectacle of myself in the short time I’d been here. ‘Yes, and you must let her grow, decide what she wants from life, don’t force her into your kitchen. She might be an artist like her mum, so let her choose,’ I said, reminding both of us that she had a mother, and as cosy as this felt, it wasn’t real.
He smiled, that old, twinkly smile. ‘Yeah, but wait till she tastes my lemon cake, and my breakfast muffins… and we’re working on this new kind of batter made with avos… She won’t be able to stop herself.’
I smiled at him as he talked passionately about avocado batter, then looked down at Clover drinking her milk. She was so tiny, so vulnerable, so trusting of the woman who had suddenly stepped into her life. Would I stay, could I? Was it even my decision to make? I hated myself for even thinking it. I know how I’d feel if I was Saffron and I’d found out my former partner’s woman had fed my child, sat drinking lemonade with him while batting her eyelashes and holding in her stomach. As for me taking care of Clover in the short time we were together, I hadn’t done this in a territorial way, I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. I’d been amazed at my own feelings towards this little bundle, but I was also aware I mustn’t lose my heart to her. Nothing was built in stone for me and Dan, our foundations were shaky, and if, for whatever reason, we couldn’t be together, I didn’t want to be hurting over Clover along with my heart breaking over Dan. I tried to stop myself worrying about what was going to happen in the future; I had little or no control of it. All I could do was make the best of my time here and hope things worked themselves out for the best.
‘I’d still love to see the café,’ I said, looking up from Clover’s soft, rounded cheeks, warm and satisfied from the milk. I gently sat her up and began rubbing her back, just like I had Emma and then Rosie, a rush of the past coming in and filling me with such sweetness I could taste it in the air. Once you have a baby it’s like you’re programmed to understand them, know what they need when they need it. And here I was, just doing what came naturally and thinking nothing of it while Dan looked on in awe.
‘You’re amazing with her,’ he sighed.
‘And so are you. Don’t forget, when she gets a bit older you’ll come into your own, you were wonderful with Rosie.’
He smiled just thinking about her and I told him all about her latest boyfriend and how she’d recently considered ‘speed dating’ as she’d seen it on TV. Dan laughed loudly at this. ‘Are you in touch with her here?’ he said.
I nodded. ‘Of course. I had
a text this morning asking for a boomerang and a koala bear,’ I laughed.
‘Is she still into Dora the Explorer?’
‘I think she’s moved on to The Real Housewives now,’ I joked. ‘They grow up so quickly.’
‘I miss Rosie,’ he said wistfully. ‘Can we Skype her some time?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ I said, knowing Rosie would be over the moon to see Dan again. As was I.
‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he asked, and I told him I was going diving.
‘Oh, babe, I wish you’d waited until I was free. I wanted to take you to this reef…’
‘I know, but I wanted to do this and the way things are you might never be free. You’ve got the café and Clover and I just feel while I’m here I need to do stuff.’
‘Fair enough, you don’t want to be hanging around waiting for me,’ he said, checking my face, hoping, I think, that I’d contradict him. But I didn’t because he was right. ‘So, are you free the day after tomorrow?’
‘Yeah… I think so.’
‘I’ll call you, let’s do something?’
‘That would be nice,’ I said honestly.
‘But that’s two whole days away,’ he sighed.
‘We waited over a year, Dan, I think we can do another two days.’
Sitting here with him, holding his baby, I had to ask myself if either of us was ready for this. He was so busy and I was determined to grab some me-time. I wanted a simple life. But Clover changed all that. I don’t know why I felt like I’d been cheated out of something, because it was my own fault he’d gone and got himself another life. But I was frustrated – he’d suddenly become a business owner and father at a time when I had no commitments.
There was a silence as Clover began to fall back to sleep in my arms, and Dan leaned forward and touched my knee. I felt the frisson, the weakening in my bones, but moved my knee away from his hand, and he took it back, injured.