‘Unreliable.’
‘Unreliable?’
‘Not unreliable. Irregular. Erratic. So we thought we would sort out some money for the baby, just in case.’
‘I see,’ Ted murmurs, trying to hide his smile. He restrains himself from asking, in case of what? ‘That’s very kind of you. Have you got a pen?’ His mother hands him a fountain pen and Ted scribbles his name in the box marked ‘consent’.
At the door, his mother is still talking about the shower and towels and popping up to see his grandmother.
‘Sorry,’ Ted says, kissing her cheek, ‘got to go.’
‘You’re not going to jog all the way to Gospel Oak, are you?’
Ted walks backwards, waving at her. ‘No. I’ll get the bus.’
‘The bus? I’ll give you a lift. You don’t have to get the bus. I’ll drive you, then I can see—’
‘I’ll get the bus,’ Ted says, still waving, still walking. Then he stops.
His mother regards him, the door held in one hand. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Do you remember . . . ?’ he asks, then has to break off to think. ‘A man came to the house once. And you . . . you sent him away. I think. I’m sure you did.’
‘When?’
‘Years ago. When I was small. A man in a brown jacket. Sort of untidy hair. I was upstairs. You were arguing with him. You said – I remember this – you said, “No, you can’t come in, you have to leave.” Do you remember that?’
His mother gives an emphatic shake of her head. ‘No.’
‘Who would he have been? He was looking up at the house as he walked away. And he waved at me. You don’t remember?’
She isn’t looking at him. She is running her hand over the paint-work of the door, as if checking for cracks. ‘Not at all,’ she says, with her face turned away.
‘He waved at me as if he—’
‘Sounds like a travelling salesman or something. We used to get a lot of them coming to the door in those days. A pushy lot, they were.’ His mother turns to him, teeth bared in a smile. ‘That’s the most likely explanation.’
‘Right.’
‘Goodbye, darling. See you soon.’ She shuts the door quickly and, after a moment, Ted turns and sets off across the street.
Elina doesn’t hear Ted’s key in the lock because the baby is screaming again, his fist rammed into his mouth, his head buried in her neck. She is doing circuits of the living room in that special slow-bouncing walk, like someone on the moon, Elina thinks, or someone in deep snow. The baby has fed for two thirty-second bursts in the last hour: he latches on with gusto but then pulls away, shrieking. Is he in pain? Is there something wrong with her milk? Doesn’t he like it? Is there something wrong with him? Or is there something wrong with her?
Elina eyes the baby book on the sofa. She’d bought it because the woman in the bookshop had told her it was the ‘absolute baby Bible’. She’s looked up ‘wind’, she’s looked up ‘crying’, she’s looked up ‘feeding problems’ and ‘colic’, she’s looked up ‘despair’ and ‘agony’ and then ‘fathomless grief’, but she can’t find anything helpful.
She changes the baby’s position so that he is lying along her forearm, his head cradled in her palm. She rubs her other hand up and down his back. He seems to accept this change with a seriousness, a concentrated frown, as if to say, yes, let’s try this, maybe it will work. Lasse, she makes herself think, as she looks down at his silken head, Arto, Paarvo, Nils, Stefan. How are you supposed to choose one name for your child? How does anyone decide? Does he look like a Peter, a Sebastian, a Mikael? Or is he a Sam, a Jeremy, a David? She is feeling, along the tendons and veins of her arms, minute adjustments, peristaltic gurgles, catches, releases of his tiny alimentary canal and she is focusing so entirely on these that when she raises her head, and sees the outline of two faces in the darkened window before her, she lets out a shriek, whirling round, clutching at the baby so as not to drop him.
It’s Ted, who has come into the room behind her, a wry smile on his face, dressed in his jogging clothes, flinging his keys to the sofa. ‘Well,’ he is saying, ‘that’s quite a greeting.’
The baby, frightened by her shriek, begins to wail again. Not with the rasped, raw shouts of the last hour but a new, tense, spiralling cry.
‘You scared me,’ she mouths over the noise.
‘Sorry,’ he mouths back. ‘How are you two?’
She shrugs.
‘Do you want me to take him?’
Elina nods, hands over the baby. Her arms feel light, oddly numb, as in that game where you stand pressing your hands to the door-frame, then step back and your arms float, of their own accord, up into the air.
She slumps down to the sofa, closes her eyes and rests her head on the low cushions. After two, perhaps three seconds of this oblivion, she feels a hand on her arm. ‘I think he’s hungry.’ Ted is handing the baby back to her. ‘Maybe you should feed him.’
‘For God’s sake,’ she screams, as she yanks at her shirt, trying to pull it up and hook it under her chin while she fumbles with the catch of her bra, the pad, the angle of her nipple, the baby’s fist, which is flailing dangerously close to the swell of her rigid, hot-skinned breast. ‘What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the last hour?’
Ted gazes down at her, perplexed by her sudden anger. She sees him take a deep breath before he speaks. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he says, in a slow, placatory voice. ‘I’ve only just got in.’
The baby is slippery in her grasp, he is puffing and writhing with anxiety, with hunger, she wants nothing more than to lie down, to apologise to Ted, to have this breast drained of its sore, scalding milk, for someone to bring her a drink of water, for someone to tell her it’s all going to be all right. The baby is staring at the breast, hesitating, then his gums clamp down firmly and Elina’s whole body curls with the pain of it. He seems to think for another few seconds and then, at last, he begins to suck, with the absorbed air of someone getting down to business, his eyes moving back and forth, as if reading invisible text in the air.
She lowers her shoulders, very slowly, a bit at a time. She looks up into the room. Ted is sitting in the chair opposite, watching them, frowning, one leg crossed over the other. She attempts a smile at him and she sees that, in fact, he is not watching them but looking at something near them. He has that odd, unfocused look in his eyes.
‘Are you all right?’
He blinks and focuses on her, bemused. ‘Huh?’
‘Are – you – all right?’
He seems to shake himself. ‘Of course. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason. Just, you know, checking.’
‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘Keep checking. Keep asking me if I’m all right.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s annoying. I keep telling you I’m fine.’
‘Annoying?’ she repeats. ‘It’s annoying that I care about you, is it?’
Ted pushes himself to his feet. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he mutters, and walks off.
They lie on the bed, all three of them, on their backs, Elina staring at the ceiling, the baby asleep between them, arms spread wide.
‘I wonder,’ Ted begins, ‘when he’ll start remembering things.’
She turns to look at him. Ted has his head propped up on his elbow and is gazing at the baby. ‘It varies, doesn’t it?’ she says. ‘Around three or four, I think.’
‘Three or four?’ he murmurs, regarding her with raised brows.
She smiles at him. ‘I’m not talking about you, Mr Amnesiac, I’m talking about normal people with normal brains.’
‘What is a normal brain, Ms Insomniac?’
She ignores him. ‘I remember my brother being born—’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Um . . .’ she has to think ‘. . . two. Two and five months.’
‘Really?’ Ted is geniunely surprised. ‘You remember some
thing from the age of two?’
‘Uh-huh. But it was a big thing. The arrival of a brother. Anyone would remember that.’
He curls a hand around the baby’s foot. ‘Not me.’
‘I’ve read that people with younger siblings have better memories because they’ve been, I don’t know, exercised more. They can pin down their memories more easily.’
‘That’s me stuffed, then.’ He grins, lets go of the baby’s foot and lies back on the bed, his hands behind his head. ‘It’s a perfect excuse for my rubbish memory, though. No siblings.’ Elina looks over at him. She sees the tan lines on his arms, around the wrist where his watch goes, the muscles pushing up from under the skin of his legs, the way the dark hair gathers at the navel, the chest. It’s a hot night and he’s wearing only a pair of shorts. How strange, she thinks, that he is so physically unchanged. When I am unrecognisable.
Ted is speaking again. ‘. . . something about having him, about watching you and him together that means I can suddenly almost see these things. Almost but not quite. I remembered this thing the other day – it’s not much, don’t get excited – but I remembered walking down a path and my hand was being held by someone much taller than me, someone in green shoes, you know those high ones, not stilettos, with a kind of thick sole.’
‘Platform shoes?’
‘Yes. Green ones, with a wooden sole.’
‘Really? What else?’
‘That was it. I just remembered the sensation of having my arm straight up above my head.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ she turns over, reaches out a hand and lays it on his chest; he covers it immediately with both of his own, ‘that your memory is improving. Can it be possible?’
‘Apparently,’ he says. He lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it absently. ‘Miracles do happen.’
One night Lexie was left alone at Elsewhere. Innes had disappeared, muttering something about viewing a new triptych in someone’s studio, and Laurence had gone to the Mandrake. Lexie was determined not to leave until she had cut a further two hundred words from a rather verbose piece about George Barker. She gripped a blue pencil between her teeth and bent over the closely typed copy.
‘The quintessential quality, tone and distinctiveness of Barker’s cadences . . .’ she read. Did it need ‘quality’ and ‘tone’? And ‘distinctiveness’? Didn’t ‘quintessential quality’ mean the same as ‘distinctiveness’? Lexie sighed and bit down on the end of the pencil, tasting lead and wood. She had read this so many times that the piece was losing sense, the words so familiar that none of them meant anything any more. Her pencil end hovered over ‘distinctiveness’ and then ‘quintessential quality’, then back, until she sighed again and finally made her decision. She scored out ‘distinctiveness’, on the grounds that it was an ugly word, made up of—
The door screeched open and Daphne stepped in, shaking rain from her coat and hair. ‘God,’ she was exclaiming, ‘it’s a filthy night out there.’ She looked around. ‘Where is everyone? What happened? Are you here all alone?’
‘Yes,’ Lexie said. She and Daphne regarded each other, the desk between them. Lexie put down her blue pencil, then picked it up again. ‘I’m just finishing this and then I’m going to—’
Daphne came to look over her shoulder. ‘Is that Venables’s book review? His copy’s always a dog’s dinner. I don’t know why Innes keeps using him. He’s cheap, I suppose, but that’s all that can be said for him. Hanging clause.’ Daphne pointed with a bitten-down fingernail at the second paragraph. ‘The word “stanza” twice in one sentence.’ She pointed elsewhere on the page. ‘The lazy bugger. Sometimes I wonder if he even reads them over when he’s finished.’
Daphne drew herself up to sit on Lexie’s desk and Lexie, hotly aware of Daphne’s gaze, began to rearrange the hanging clause.
‘Quite something, though, that you’ve been given that,’ Daphne remarked.
Lexie looked up at her, at her lipsticked mouth, pursed in contemplation, at the green ring encircling a thumb. ‘Do you think?’
Daphne examined a nail, bit it, then examined it again. ‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘If he gives you Venables’s rubbish to resuscitate, he must rate your abilities.’
Lexie yawned, suddenly overcome with fatigue. ‘I don’t know why,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel as though I have any abilities at all.’
Daphne reached out and plucked the pencil from her fingers. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Enough. I think we both need a drink.’
‘I need to finish this,’ Lexie protested, because it was the truth and also because she’d never been out with just Daphne before and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. ‘I’ve still got a hundred and thirty words to cut. I promised Innes I’d—’
‘Never mind Innes. What do you think he’ll be doing with Colquhoun if not downing the best part of a bottle of whisky? Let’s get out of here.’
They tried the French Pub – Daphne’s first choice – but it was so full that people had spilled out on to the pavement. ‘It’ll take years to get served,’ Daphne muttered, as they surveyed the scene from the opposite pavement. They considered the Mandrake, but rejected the idea. At the door of the Colony Room, Muriel Belcher stopped them with a glare. ‘Members only, I’m afraid,’ she rasped.
Daphne removed the cigarette from her mouth. ‘Ah, go on, Muriel, just this once.’
‘You two donnas don’t, as I recall, have the honour of membership here.’
‘Please,’ Lexie begged, ‘it’s late. Everywhere’s packed. We won’t stay long. We’ll be on our best behaviour, we promise. We’ll buy you a drink.’
‘Where’s Miss Kent tonight?’
‘Off with Colquhoun,’ Daphne said.
Muriel raised an eyebrow and looked at Lexie. ‘I see. Going over to the other side, is she?’
‘Um,’ Lexie floundered, not entirely following Muriel’s meaning, ‘well . . .’
Daphne came to her aid. ‘That’s about as likely as the earth becoming flat,’ she interjected.
‘Well, you two should know.’ Muriel cackled. ‘You should know.’
‘So can we come in?’ Daphne said. ‘Please?’ She was pushing Lexie forward so that she was almost on top of Muriel. Lexie had to push back so as not to land in the landlady’s lap. ‘She’s trading with a member,’ Daphne said, still shoving Lexie in the ribs; Lexie trod down hard on Daphne’s toe. ‘Couldn’t that count?’
Muriel looked them both up and down. ‘All right, but only this once. Make sure your dilly boy is with you next time.’
‘Dilly boy?’ Lexie whispered, as they stepped through the tables to the bar.
‘She means Innes,’ Daphne whispered back.
The phrase in connection with Innes struck Lexie as particularly funny and she began to giggle. ‘Why does she call him that? And why does she refer to him as “she”?’
‘Hush,’ Daphne gripped her arm, ‘she’ll think you’re laughing at her. And she’ll throw us out.’
Lexie couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Will she?’
‘Dear God,’ Daphne moaned. ‘And you haven’t had anything to drink yet. She calls all men “she”. Have you never noticed?’
‘But why?’
‘She just does,’ Daphne let out impatiently. ‘Now,’ she said, as they reached the bar, ‘what’ll we have? Gin, I think. I’ve got no money at all – how about you?’
They sat at a table near the bar, squashed between a man in a filthy sheepskin coat, two young men, one carrying a beautiful patent-leather handbag over his arm, and the old woman Lexie had seen in here before.
Lexie pushed a gin towards Daphne, stirred her own and said, ‘Bottoms up,’ before downing the lot. The alcohol flooded the back of her throat, making her cough and her eyes water. ‘Ouf,’ she said, spluttering, ‘ah. Shall we have another?’
Daphne eyed her and took a sip of her own drink. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you, Lexie Sinclair?’
Lexie hooked an ice cube out of her glass and dropped it into
her mouth. ‘What do you mean?’
Daphne shrugged. ‘You throw yourself into everything.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes.’ She sucked meditatively on her swizzle stick. ‘It’s obvious why you and Innes are . . . you know . . . a success. He’s just the same.’
Lexie crunched down on the ice cube, feeling it splinter between her teeth. She ground it into smaller and smaller pieces. She looked at Daphne, at the green thumb ring, the smooth skin of her brow, her wide mouth as she sipped from her glass. She was presented, for a fleeting moment, with an image of Innes above Daphne in bed; she pictured his hands, his lips touching that skin, that hair, their mouths meeting. Lexie gulped down the particles of ice and took a deep breath. She felt that the time had come to speak, that if she and Daphne were to continue, the thing needed to be said.
The Hand That First Held Mine Page 16