Elina does, and has to point out twice that Vilkuna has a k, not a c.
‘You speak very good English,’ the nurse says, as she takes the baby from her.
Elina watches as the woman flexes the baby’s arms, his legs, touches the top of his head. ‘Well, I’ve lived here for a while, you know, and—’
‘In London?’
‘Mostly.’ Elina is weary of telling this story, weary of people trying to sniff out her origins. ‘But all over, really,’ she says vaguely. ‘Different places.’
‘I couldn’t work out what your accent was. I thought you might be Australian at first.’ The nurse hands the baby to her. ‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘He’s fine. You have a beautiful healthy boy.’
Elina floats out of the health centre; she has the baby in her arms, the blanket draped over him to shield him from the glare. She loves that nurse, she loves her. The words beautiful and healthy and boy circle her head like butterflies. She would like to say them aloud; she would like to go back in and ask the nurse to tell her that again.
She walks back towards the main road and she is saying the words, under her breath, through her mouth, which is the shape of a smile, and she is thinking about how you can always tell if someone on the phone is smiling by the sound of their voice, and how the shape of your lips must determine this.
At the corner, where she’d left Ted, she stops and looks around. Beautiful, she hears again, healthy. She turns left, she turns right. No sign of Ted. The sun is beating down on her shoulders, on the part of her neck not covered by her apple blouse. She frowns. Where is he? She crosses the road, puzzlement giving way to her earlier irritation. Where the hell has he gone? And what is wrong with him today?
She turns a corner and there he is, standing on the pavement gazing up at something, shielding his eyes. ‘What are you doing?’ she says, as she reaches him. ‘I’ve been searching everywhere for you.’
He turns and looks at her as if he’s never seen her or the baby before.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks again. ‘What’s going on?’
He squints up at the tree behind her, into the sun. ‘Do you know that song,’ he says, ‘about three crows?’
‘What?’
‘You know,’ he says and then he sings, in a cracked voice, ‘ “ Three crows sat upon a wall, sat upon a wall, three crows sat upon a wall on a cold and frosty morning.” ’
‘ Ted—’
He lowers himself to a garden wall behind him. ‘The next bit goes, “The first crow was greeting for his ma, greeting for his ma” – and so on. But I can’t remember what comes after that.’
She shifts the baby to the other arm, rearranging the blanket. Despite herself, she is picturing three crows perched on the wall next to Ted, lined up, their feathers glossy, greenish black, their beaks hooked, their scaled feet gripping the brick.
‘It must start, “The second crow”.’ Ted closes his eyes. Then he opens them and places first one hand then the other over them, as if checking his eyesight. He shakes his head. ‘I can’t remember.’
Elina comes to sit next to him. She puts her hand on his leg, feels the muscles quivering under the fabric. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Am I OK?’ he repeats.
‘Are you having one of your things? With your eyes?’
He is frowning, as if giving this question great consideration. ‘I thought I was,’ he says slowly, ‘or that I was about to. But it seems to have gone away.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Is it?’
Elina swallows. She is seized by an urge to cry. She has to turn her head away so that he doesn’t see. What is wrong with him? Maybe some men lose the plot when women have babies – Elina doesn’t know and she can’t think who to ask. Perhaps it’s normal for them to become a little distracted, a little withdrawn. It seems that just as she is beginning to rise, to struggle, blinking and gasping, to the surface, he is starting to sink. She grips his leg tighter, as if to transmit something of herself to him. Please, she wants to say, please don’t be like this, I can’t do this alone. Another part of her wants to shriek, get up off that wall, for God’s sake, and help me find a taxi. But she forces herself to speak in an even voice. ‘Why “greeting for”?’ she says. ‘Why the “for”?’
‘It means crying,’ he says, still covering one eye, then the other. ‘I think. It’s slang or dialect or something. It means he’s crying for his mother.’
‘Oh.’ Elina looks down and almost jumps because the baby has woken up. His eyes are wide open and he is staring straight at her.
‘My mum used to sing it,’ Ted is saying, ‘when I was little. She’d know about the other verses. I’ll ask her, next time I see her.’
Elina nods, touches the baby’s cheek with her finger and Ted leans in to see.
Ted is thinking about paternity leave. It is an idle, meandering train of thought he’s been having ever since he left the house with a list of things Elina needs for the baby. Or a list of things they need. Wipes, cotton wool, barrier cream – on and on it goes. Who would have thought that a person so small could generate such heaps, such mountains, of stuff, of needs?
He has been reflecting that his role, as a new father on his two weeks of paternity leave, is akin to that of a runner on a film set. The baby is the star, undoubtedly, with its every whim instantly met, its demands and timetable slavishly adhered to at all times. Elina is the director, the one responsible for proceedings, the one trying to keep everything on track. And he, Ted, is the runner. There to fetch and carry, to assist the director in her work, to mop up spillages, to make the tea.
Ted is rather pleased with this analogy. He is smiling to himself as he walks along the pavement, weaving in and out of the plane trees, sidestepping the odd mound of dog shit, swinging the shopping bags at the ends of his arms.
He turns into his front garden, fumbles for his keys. He unlocks the door and scrapes his feet on the mat, shouting, ‘Hi. It’s me. I got the stuff. All of it except the biodegradable wipes. They didn’t have them. So I got the ordinary ones. I know you won’t like them but I reckoned it was better than getting none at all.’ He pauses to let her answer. But the house is silent. ‘Elina?’ he calls. Then he stops. She might be asleep. He takes the shopping bags into the kitchen and dumps them on the counter. He puts his head around the sitting-room door, but there’s no one in there, no one stretched out on the sofa. The pram stands in the hallway, empty, the sheets rumpled, as if the baby has only just been taken out of it. Ted puts his hand to where the baby’s head lies, and is it his imagination or does it still feel a little warm?
A sound – something being dropped, a footfall, a click – from the floor above makes him look up. ‘Elina?’ he says again. But, again, there’s no answer.
He takes the stairs, slowly at first, then two at a time. ‘El,’ he says, on the landing, ‘where are you?’ She has to be here somewhere, she can’t possibly have gone out.
And yet the bedroom is empty, the duvet pulled taut over the pillows, the wardrobes shut, the mirror above the mantelpiece blank and silvery. In the bathroom the window has been left open and the curtain is drifting into the room like smoke.
He stands again on the landing, perplexed. Where can she be? He checks the bedroom again, the living room, the kitchen, just to be sure she hasn’t fallen asleep somewhere. After a moment’s thought, he checks the space behind the bed, too, just in case. He doesn’t allow himself to register what the ‘just in case’ might be. But she’s not there either. She’s gone – and the baby too.
In the hallway, he fumbles in his back pocket for his mobile phone. As he fiddles with the buttons, scrolling down for her number, he catches sight of the pram again. Where would she go, he thinks, with the baby but without the pram? He clears his throat as he lifts the phone to his ear. He must, he decides, be careful to come across as relaxed, casual; his voice mustn’t sound panicked; he mustn’t communicate how terrified he is.
He hears the line click an
d then the tinny sound of ringing. And, then, somewhere nearby, an echoing ring. Ted takes his phone away from his ear and listens. In the next room another phone is ringing and ringing. Ted shuts off his phone and he hears Elina’s fall silent. He lowers himself to the stairs and sits with his elbows resting on his knees, head gripped in his hands. Where can she be? What should he do? Should he call the police? But what would he say? He tells himself to stay calm, he has to stay calm, he mustn’t panic, he has to think this through, but all the time his mind is shouting, she’s gone, she’s taken the baby, she’s disappeared, and she’s so weak she can’t even walk as far as—
A deafening, shrill noise makes him leap off the stairs. For a moment, he can’t think what it is or why it is so loud. Then he realises it’s the doorbell, ringing right above his head. It’s her. She’s back. Relief surges through him and he seizes the door handle and wrenches it open, saying, ‘God, you scared me. I was—’
He stops. On the doorstep is his mother.
‘Darling,’ she says, ‘I was just passing. I met Joan – you remember Joan from across the way, with the cocker spaniel – for coffee in South End Green. There’s that lovely new café, have you been?’ She clips over the threshold, presses her cheek to his, clutching at both his shoulders. ‘Anyway, I just couldn’t pass the end of your road without coming to see you all and without a cuddle with my grandson. So,’ she holds her arms aloft, as if presenting herself on stage, ‘here I am!’
‘Um,’ Ted says. He runs a hand through his hair. He grips the edge of the door. ‘I’ve just got back,’ he mumbles. ‘I . . . er . . .’ He goes to shut the door, then looks out of it, at the path, at the pavement, just to see if she’s there, if she’s coming. ‘I’m not sure,’ he begins carefully, as he shuts the door, ‘where Elina is.’
‘Oh.’ His mother unthreads the silk scarf from around her neck, unbuttons her jacket. ‘Popped out, has she?’
‘Maybe.’ He leans his back against the door and stares at his mother. Something is different about her and he’s not sure what it is. He looks at her hair, her cheeks, her nose, the skin on her neck, her hands as they hang her coat on a hook, her feet, shod in patent-leather heels. He has the odd sensation that he doesn’t recognise her, that he doesn’t know who she is, that she is a stranger to him, rather than the person he’s spent more time with than anybody else in the world. ‘I don’t . . . um . . . I don’t—You look different,’ he blurts out. ‘Have you done something to yourself?’
She turns towards him, brushing down her skirt. ‘What kind of thing?’
‘I don’t know. Your hair. Have you changed your hair?’
She raises a self-conscious hand to her helmet of platinum blonde. ‘No.’
‘Is that new?’ He points at her blouse.
‘No.’ She makes a small movement of impatience – a touch to her eyebrow with the side of her finger – and Ted recognises that. ‘When are you expecting Elina back?’
He still stares at her. He can’t put his finger on what it is. The mole on her neck, the line of her jaw, the rings on her fingers: it’s as if he’s never seen them before.
‘She’s taken the baby with her, I suppose?’ his mother is saying.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Darling, could you possibly phone her and tell her I’m here? Because I have to be back by six tonight. Your father needs his—’
‘She hasn’t taken her phone.’ Ted gestures towards the living room. ‘It’s in there.’
His mother lets out a small, irritated sigh. ‘Well, that is a shame. I did so want to have—’
‘I don’t know where she is, Mum.’
She looks at him sharply. She hasn’t missed the tremor in his voice. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean she’s gone. I don’t know where.’
‘With the baby?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, she’s probably taken him for a walk. She’ll be back soon. We’ll have a cup of tea in the garden and—’
‘Mum, she can barely even make it up the stairs.’
She frowns. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Since what happened. The birth. You know. She’s very . . . weak. She’s very ill. She nearly died, Mum. Remember? And I come back from the shops and she’s not here and I’ve no idea where she’s gone or how she’d get there because—’ Ted stops. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
His mother walks into the living room, walks out again, walks into the kitchen. ‘Are you sure she’s not here?’
Ted rolls his eyes. ‘Yes.’
His mother goes to the sink, turns on the tap and starts filling the kettle.
‘Mum, what are you doing?’ he says, aghast. ‘How can you make tea when—’ He stops again. He has suddenly seen that the key is in the back door. It’s not hanging on its hook. It’s in the door. Ted darts towards it. He pushes the door open and the smell of the garden rushes to meet him. He steps out on to the decking and he sees that the studio door also has a key in it and his heart seems to pound with joy as he runs over the grass to the studio window.
Through it, he sees something incredible. Elina, in profile, standing at the sink. She is wearing her overalls and she is doing something, mixing a colour, perhaps, or washing a brush, Ted can’t see exactly what. But her movements are deft, practised, and the look on her face is one of absorbed serenity. She looks, Ted sees, like she used to. Like she did when he first met her, when she arrived at his house in some battered van she’d borrowed, all alone, perfectly prepared to lug astonishingly heavy boxes and equipment up two flights of stairs to the attic. He’d watched this slight, pixie-like woman with cropped, bleached hair calmly labouring under the weight of an enormous lightbox and he’d gone out and offered to help. She’d seemed surprised. ‘I can manage,’ she’d said, and he’d wanted to laugh because she clearly could not. He’d watched her come and go during the weeks that followed – out in the evenings, he didn’t know where, up and down to the attic, coming into the kitchen to eat at odd hours. He’d hear her walking about above his head in the middle of the night and would wonder what she was doing, had felt oddly privileged to be able to witness the private workings of this unusual life. Often, after one of those walking-about nights, she’d had that look the next day: a woman preoccupied, a woman with a satisfying secret, and he’d wanted to ask her, what is it, what is it you’re doing up there?’
He loves that look. He’s missed it. It was what made him realise what had to happen, what he must do. After a while, he began to see that Elina reminded him of nothing so much as one of those balloons children have – the bright ones, filled with helium, that bob and tug at the end of their string. One moment of inattention and off they go, skywards, away, never to be seen again. He saw that Elina had lived everywhere, all over the world, that she arrived and left and moved on. That secret thing she had, what she did up there in the attic when no one was looking, with her paints and her turpentine and her canvases – she only needed that, she didn’t lack anything else, any anchor, any gravity. And he saw that if he didn’t take hold of her, if he didn’t tether her down, if he didn’t bind her to him, she would be off again. And so he did it. He laid hold of her and he held on tight; he sometimes pictures this as him tying the string of a balloon to his wrist and getting on with his life while it floats there, just above his head. He has been holding on tight ever since. In their early days, it took him a while to get used to waking sometimes in the night and finding that she’d gone, that the bed was empty. At first, it had made him start awake and run about the house in a panic. But then he had learnt that she sometimes slipped away in the night, to work, to lead her other life. He always checked, always looked out of the back windows of the house, to see the light on in the studio and then he would return to bed, alone.
The look is back! He has to suppress the urge to clap his hands as he watches her through her studio window. She will be all right again, he sees, she has survived. None of this – the carnage at the hospital, his whisper
of let’s not bother – has vanquished her. She will be all right. He can see the special look on her face, in the workings of the muscles of her shoulders, in the set of her mouth. She’s working. He feels the excitement radiating from her. She’s working.
Then he hears a voice to his left: ‘In here, is she?’ and Ted is so caught up in what he has been seeing through the window that he fails to catch on quickly enough to prevent his mother pushing open the studio door and stepping inside.
Several things happen at once. The studio door, always a bit loose on its hinges, slams back against the wooden wall with a crash. Ted sees Elina whirl round from the sink, knocking a china saucer to the floor, which smashes. The baby, somewhere in the room with her, wakes with a start and lets out a piercing screech.
‘Oh,’ Elina cries, a blue-stained hand clutched to her chest, ‘what are you doing here?’
Ted is through the door in seconds, talking over his mother, trying to explain, but Elina is rushing to pick up the baby and she steps on the pieces of broken china in her bare feet so Ted picks up the baby, but the baby is furious, woken from his nap, and Elina is sitting on a chair, trying to pull the bits of china out of her foot with her blue hands and she is saying, I can’t believe you woke him up, I’d just got him off, and her foot is bleeding and she sounds as if she might cry. She lets out a Finnish word that sounds to Ted like a curse, as she pulls a shard of saucer from her heel.
The Hand That First Held Mine Page 13