The Hand That First Held Mine

by Maggie O'Farrell

  ‘You go back to work,’ Ted says unconvincingly, above the noise, trying not to look at the blood dripping out of her wounds, ‘if you like. We’ll take the baby and—’

  Elina mutters a different Finnish curse and hurls a piece of china into the bin. ‘How can I go back to work?’ she cries, gesturing at the screaming baby. ‘Are you going to feed him? Is your mother?’

  Ted bounces his son up and down. ‘It’s not our fault,’ he says, over the noise. ‘We didn’t know where you were. I got back and you were gone. I was really worried about you. I looked everywhere and—’

  ‘Everywhere?’ Elina repeats.

  ‘I thought . . . I thought . . .’

  ‘You thought what?’ They stare at each other for a moment, then both drop their eyes. ‘Give me the baby,’ she says quietly, and begins to unbutton her overalls.

  ‘Elina, come into the house. You need to put a plaster on that and—’

  ‘Give me the baby.’

  ‘Feed him in the house. My mother’s come to see us. Come into the house and—’

  ‘I will not!’ she shouts again. ‘I’m staying here. Now give me the baby!’

  Out of the corner of his eye Ted sees his mother, standing near the door. She is shaking her head. ‘Goodness,’ she says, ‘what a noise.’ Ted sees Elina flinch at the sound of her voice and he feels guilty because he knows that she doesn’t like anyone in her studio, anyone at all, not even him, not even her dealer. But Ted’s mother isn’t looking at the work, she isn’t looking at the rough sketches and stretched canvases and the photographs and the transparencies on the lightbox and the tools on the walls, she’s only looking at the baby, in that hungry, needful way she has.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ his mother croons to the baby. ‘What’s wrong, little man?’ She lifts him out of Ted’s hands; he feels the rasp of her frosted fingernails against his palms as she takes hold. ‘Are you upset because Mummy and Daddy are shouting? Are you? Don’t you worry. You come along with Grandma and everything will be all right.’

  She disappears out of the door with him. Ted and Elina look at each other across the empty studio. Elina’s face is chalk white, her mouth slightly open, as if she’s about to say something.

  ‘I was worried about you,’ Ted says again, scuffing his shoe against the lip of the rug.

  Elina springs from the chair and comes right up to him. ‘Do you know what, Ted?’ She takes hold of his face in her hands. ‘I’m fine. I really am. I wasn’t for a while but now I’m doing OK. You’re the one we need to worry about.’

  He gazes into her eyes, mute. He sees the familiar slate blue of them, the left one slightly darker than the right, he sees a miniature version of himself looking back out at him. They stand like that for a long moment. From the open door, they can hear the baby’s screams redoubling, sharpening.

  Ted pulls away from Elina’s grasp. He drops his gaze. He half turns. Elina, he knows, is still looking at him. He steps out of the studio. ‘Baby’s hungry,’ he mutters, as he goes. ‘I’ll get him back for you.’

  Lexie had been working at Elsewhere for a few months, and living with Innes for a few weeks. They arrived together each morning, roaring down Wardour Street, turning into Bayton Street, in the MG; Lexie would always associate these morning rides with a pleasantly sore ache in her groin, her upper thighs – Innes liked to make love at night and again in the morning. He said it cleared his head. ‘Otherwise,’ he said, ‘I’d be thinking about sex all day, instead of work.’ It was, he said, particularly difficult since Lexie, the object of his lust, worked with him. ‘There you are, you see, walking about, taunting me, all day long, naked under your clothes,’ he’d complain.

  ‘Just park the car, Innes,’ she would say, ‘and stop whining.’ One afternoon, the usually busy office was quiet – Laurence had gone out to the printer’s, Daphne was off on an assignment, Amelia had gone to supervise a photographer. Lexie and Innes were working alone. They were not speaking. Or, rather, Lexie was not speaking to Innes. She was bashing crossly at a typewriter, not looking in his direction. He, she knew, was sitting at his desk, reading through a newspaper, an infuriating half-smile on his face.

  Lexie slammed back the carriage on the typewriter, then leant her head in her hands, staring down at the pleats of her green wool dress.

  ‘A journalist was not made in a day, Lex,’ Innes observed, from across the room.

  She let out a sound halfway between a growl and a scream, yanked the page out of the machine, scrumpled it in her hands and hurled it at him. ‘Shut up!’ she shouted. ‘I hate you!’

  The ball of paper fell in a pathetic arc to the carpet, nowhere near its destination. Innes turned a page with a flamboyant rustle. ‘No, you don’t. You love me.’

  ‘I don’t, I don’t. I loathe the very sight of you.’

  He smiled, folded the newspaper and laid it on his desk. ‘You know, if you can’t take the criticism – the constructive criticism – of your editor, you’ll never make it. You’ll be an overqualified typist for the rest of your life.’

  Lexie glared at him. ‘Constructive? You call that constructive? It was mean and hateful and—’

  ‘All I said was that you were still in undergraduate gear, that—’

  ‘Stop it!’ She held her hands over her ears. ‘Don’t say it! Don’t speak to me!’

  He laughed again, got up from his desk and walked across the office to the little back room. ‘Well, I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll be in here, if you need me, but I want two hundred words by lunchtime.’

  She let out another growl at his back. Then she looked again at the typescript she’d shown Innes last night. He’d said it was time for her to ‘try her hand’ at writing something. He’d sent her along to a small show at a gallery and told her to produce a two-hundred-word review. She’d arrived early, circled the space, looked at each painting carefully and noted down what she saw on her pad. She overheard someone asking who that was and when she heard the reply from the gallery owner – ‘Kent’s new girlie’ – turned and flashed a furious look on him. Girlie, indeed. She had returned to scribbling on her pad, as if she didn’t care, and had ended up with pages and pages of indecipherable scribbles. She’d spent a week writing and rewriting it. Then Innes had spent perhaps five minutes reading it before returning it to her, covered with blue pen.

  What did he mean, anyway, ‘undergraduate gear’? And what was wrong with the phrase ‘vibrant hue’? What did he mean by ‘a more arresting opening’?

  She sighed, rolling another sheet of paper into the typewriter. As she did so, the door to the office opened and in stepped a woman. Or perhaps ‘lady’ was more the word. She had on a red pillbox hat with a net veil covering half of her face, a navy coat with a nipped-in waist, navy shoes. She clasped a shiny bag in her gloved hands. Her face was pale, flawlessly powdered, her lipsticked mouth parted, as if she would speak if only she might find the words.

  ‘Good morning,’ Lexie said. The woman, surely, any second now, would realise she was in the wrong place. ‘May I help you?’

  The woman gave her a quick, narrow look. ‘Are you Lexie?’

  ‘I am.’

  With one hand on her hip, the woman proceeded to examine her as if Lexie were a store mannequin and she the discerning buyer. ‘Well,’ she exclaimed, when she’d finished, letting out a peal of brittle laughter, ‘all I can say is that they get younger every time. Wouldn’t you agree, darling?’ At this the woman turned, and Lexie was astonished to see that behind her was a girl of twelve or thirteen. She was pale, with hair that had been coaxed into ringlets – Lexie imagined she would have had to sleep in rags all night to achieve the effect – and had her mouth open, as if nasally afflicted.

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ she muttered.

  Lexie drew herself up to her full height, which was, she was pleased to notice, a great deal more than the woman’s. ‘I beg your pardon, but may I enquire what is your business here?’

  ‘I say,’ the woman said, wit
h another burst of laughter, ‘you are a cut above the rest, aren’t you? He’s done rather well for himself, this time, to bag a chit so youthful and well-spoken. “What is your business here?”’ she mimicked, glancing back at her daughter, who continued to glare, open-mouthed, at Lexie. ‘Wherever did he find you? Not in some seedy drinking-hole, like all the others, I’ll warrant. Have a good look, my darling,’ she said, turning again to the daughter. ‘This is whom your father has left us for.’ With the final words, her perfectly made-up face began to crumple. Lexie watched, appalled, as Gloria – for it had to be her – bowed her head and searched for something in her handbag, bringing out a handkerchief and crushing it to her face.

  There was the sound of a door slamming behind them and feet pounding across the floor. Innes had appeared from the back room and was bearing down on them, his face rigid with fury.

  He came to a stop beside Lexie. He surveyed his wife for a moment, taking in the hat, the handkerchief, the tears. He took the cigarette from his mouth. ‘What are you doing here, Gloria?’ he said, through gritted teeth.

  ‘I had to come,’ Gloria whispered, reaching under her veil to dab at her eyes. ‘Call me foolish but a woman has to know. I had to see her. Margot had to see her.’ She cast her gaze imploringly up to Innes’s face but he looked over her shoulder.

  He nodded at the girl. ‘Hello, Margot,’ he said quietly. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am well, thank you, Father.’

  He seemed to wince slightly at this but he stepped sideways to see the girl better. ‘I hear you’re at a new school. How is everything there?’

  Gloria swirled round, her navy skirts swishing against Innes’s trouser-legs. ‘As if you care,’ she spat and, without looking at her daughter, said, ‘Don’t answer him, Margot.’ She and Innes glared at each other from their new proximity. ‘Don’t tell him anything. Why should you, when he treats us like this?’

  ‘Gloria—’ Innes began.

  ‘Ask him, my darling,’ Gloria said, and Lexie watched, horrified, as Gloria reached behind her, seized her daughter by the arm and propelled her forward. ‘Ask him what we came here to find out.’

  Margot could not meet her father’s eyes, her lids cast down, her face like stone.

  ‘Ask him!’ Gloria urged. ‘Because I cannot.’ More fluttering and dabbing with the handkerchief.

  Margot cleared her throat. ‘Father,’ she began, in a monotone, ‘will you please come home?’

  Innes made a small movement with his hand, as if he were about to take a draw on his cigarette but had then changed his mind. He looked for a long moment at the girl. He then rested his cigarette in an ashtray on Lexie’s desk. He folded his arms about himself. ‘Gloria,’ he spoke in a low, tight voice, ‘this display is most ill-judged. And involving Margot like this. It is really too—’

  ‘Display?’ Gloria shrieked, thrusting the girl behind her again. ‘Do you think I’m made of clay? Do you think I have no feelings? The others I could overlook – and God knows there have been enough of them – but this! This is too much. It’s all over town, you know.’

  Innes sighed, pressed his fingers to his brow. ‘What is?’

  ‘That she’s living with you! That you’ve left us to set yourself up with a mistress. A girl half your age. In the flat that by rights should belong to us, to me and Margot. And when you should be with us, with your wife and child—’

  ‘First,’ Innes began, in an even tone, ‘half of thirty-four, as I’m sure you’re aware, is seventeen.’ He gestured towards Lexie. ‘Does she look seventeen to you? Second, I have not left you to set myself up with her, as you well know. You and I have been living separately for some time now. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Third, the flat is in no sense your property. You got the house – my mother’s house, need I add? – while I took a flat. That was our agreement. Fourth, Gloria, I fail to see what business all this is of yours. I let you live your life. You must return me that favour.’

  During this speech, Lexie had stolen a covert glance at Margot. She felt an odd sense of alignment between them – both observers to what seemed to be a well-trodden argument. When her eyes met Margot’s, the girl didn’t look away. She didn’t flinch, she didn’t move a muscle. She just kept Lexie fixed with a chillingly still, open-mouthed gaze. After a second or two, Lexie was forced to look away, back to Gloria, whose hat was now slightly askew; she was screeching about decency and propriety.

  ‘Gloria,’ Innes spoke across her, with a deathly, low tone, ‘if Margot weren’t present, there are many rejoinders I could make to your accusations of moral turpitude. It is for her sake and her sake alone that I restrain myself.’

  There was a short silence. Gloria looked up at her husband, panting lightly. It was a peculiar tableau, Lexie reflected. Minus sound, minus speech, minus the child standing behind them, it might have looked like the height of passion instead of its inverse. It looked as if Innes and Gloria were about to lock each other in a frenzied embrace.

  Innes broke away first. He took two strides to the door and yanked it open. ‘I think perhaps you should leave,’ he said, addressing the floor.

  Gloria swirled again, her skirts rustling, towards Lexie, as if for a last look. She surveyed her, up and down, patting her hair, righting her hat, clearing her throat. Then she swirled back and, taking her daughter’s arm, swept out of the door Innes was holding open.

  He nodded, almost bowed, to the girl. ‘Goodbye, Margot. It’s been nice to see you.’ There was no reply. Margot Kent walked after her mother with her head bent.

  Innes pushed the door to. He inhaled deeply, then sighed out the breath. He took several quick steps into the room, then drew back a foot and kicked a wastepaper bin. The bin and its contents went skittering over the floor.

  ‘That,’ he said, apparently to no one, ‘was my wife. My dearly beloved. What a sight, eh?’ Arriving at a wall, he proceeded to slam his hand against it, once, twice. Lexie watched, unsure what to do.

  Innes shook his hand, flexing the fingers. ‘Ow,’ he said, and his voice was surprised. ‘Damn.’

  Lexie walked over to him. She took the hand in hers and began to rub it. ‘You idiot,’ she said.

  He pulled her towards him and wrapped his good arm around her. ‘For hitting the wall?’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘Or for marrying that maenad?’

  ‘Either,’ she said. ‘Both.’

  He embraced her tightly, then pulled away. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I need a drink after that. How about you?’

  ‘Um,’ Lexie frowned, ‘isn’t it a bit early for—’

  ‘You’re right! Damn it. Will anywhere be open?’

  ‘No, I meant—’

  ‘What time is it?’ He was glancing at his watch, feeling his pockets for change. ‘The Coach and Horses? No. Not at this time. We could try the French Pub. What do you think?’ He seized her by the hand and wrenched open the door. ‘Let’s go.’

  They marched along Bayton Street and at the end, where it met Dean Street, Innes stopped. He looked up Dean Street, he looked down. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. ‘We’ll try Muriel,’ he muttered. ‘She owes me a favour.’

  ‘What for?’ Lexie asked, but Innes was off again, striding down the pavement.

  Minutes later, they were sitting in a corner of the Colony Room, Innes knocking back a whisky. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon light and Muriel Belcher sat surveying her empire from a stool by the door. ‘What’s up with Miss Kent today?’ she’d remarked, as Innes marched in.

  Lexie watched coloured fish circling each other in a tank above the cash register and wrote her name over and over again with a swizzle stick in gin and tonic on the sticky table-top. A man with a wide, asymmetric face was sitting at the bar, engaged in a loud, somewhat sneering conversation with someone Innes had greeted as MacBryde. In the corner a rather beautiful tall man was dancing alone to a wind-up gramophone. An elderly woman in a bedraggled coat sat at the next table, surrounded by her bags, muttering to h
erself and sucking up the drink that Innes had bought her.

  ‘You weren’t fooled, were you?’ Innes said suddenly.

  Lexie looked up from her swizzle stick. ‘By what?’

  ‘The histrionics.’

  Lexie did not reply but dipped the stick into her drink again.

  Innes ground out his cigarette. ‘She’s a consummate actress. You can see that, can’t you? The tears and the tantrums are just an act. It’s all about the game with her. She doesn’t care either way about me. She just doesn’t like being seen to lose. She can’t bear the idea that I’m living with you.’