by Imogen Clark
Dorothy had started visiting the café when she fell pregnant, determined to do as Frank kept instructing her and take things easy. She liked the anonymity of the place. It was far enough from her street not to be filled with her neighbours, and Jack, whilst always polite, was never curious about her life. He seemed interested only in what was before his eyes and never strayed beyond that in his brief conversations with her. Once she started frequenting the café as a duo rather than a plump singleton, Jack simply asked after the health of mother and child. He did not even need to know the child’s name so that Dorothy found herself blurting it out anyway because she was so used to having to trot out the same vital statistics to anyone she met.
‘This is Miriam. She is X weeks old. She was seven pounds eight ounces. She sleeps well, thank you.’
(This last part was a lie, but Dorothy had discovered that if you confessed to other mothers that your child didn’t sleep you either got smug, sympathetic smiles or a list of foolproof and guaranteed-to-work remedies to try.)
Today the café was quiet. Miriam’s ten o’clock feed meant that they had missed the breakfast trade but were too early for those requiring lunch. Dorothy parked the pram on the pavement outside, gathered Miriam in her arms and carried her inside. The smell of toast still lingered on air made slightly damp by the water boiler, which hissed and bubbled like a geyser.
‘Good morning,’ said Jack without turning from the sink where he was washing up, sleeves rolled with Forces precision and arms plunged deep in soapy water. ‘With you in a second.’
‘Just a cup of tea would be grand,’ Dorothy said, trying not to look at the teacakes that were ready split on the counter and just crying out to be toasted and smothered in melted butter. Judging by the snug fit of the dress, she still had a few baby pounds to shift.
‘Right you are,’ said Jack, wiping his arms on a threadbare towel. ‘You sit down and I’ll bring it over.’
No post-war shakes today, then.
Dorothy chose a seat by the window, took off her jacket – no mean feat with Miriam under one arm – and then sat down balancing the baby on her lap, her tiny, twig-like spine pushed up tight against her own slightly flabby stomach. She wrapped her arms tightly around Miriam’s waist to prevent her from slipping down. Then she looked around to see who else was in. There was a woman she thought she might recognise from one of her now rare appearances in church who was chatting earnestly and sotto voce to another woman who might or might not be married to the sexton. A cursory glance at their body language told Dorothy that some poor soul was having their character assassinated in absentia. This was one of the challenges that Dorothy found with the Church of the Holy Trinity, which had adopted her after her arrival here from Ireland. Its frequenters were the least Christian people she had ever met. She looked away, hoping that the women would be too intent on their gossip to notice her but knowing that that was, sadly, extraordinarily unlikely.
The only other patron today was a man who was sitting, rather awkwardly, directly in her line of sight. He was a similar age to her, maybe a little older: she never had been any good at estimating age. She didn’t like to look at him directly but she had the impression of someone who was happy in their own skin and yet self-contained and closed down. He struck quite a contrast to her heart-on-sleeve, loud, confident and open husband and so was immediately intriguing. Dorothy felt her eyes drawn to him until, suddenly embarrassed that he might think her very forward, she switched her focus to Miriam, to the extent that she could with the baby’s back to her. Miriam, however, had other ideas. She pointed at the man, waving her arms so wildly in his direction that Dorothy had to tighten her grip for fear of losing her on to the floor. Jack was making his uneven progress across the checked linoleum towards her, her cup of tea holding its own against both limp and tremor. By the time he placed her drink down on the table, only the smallest amount had made the journey from cup to saucer. Jack smiled at this minor achievement and Dorothy was relieved. She always felt awkward when the tea needed to be replaced, not wanting to draw attention to Jack’s obvious shortcomings by complaining, but spilled tea never seemed to bother Jack.
By the time she switched her focus from tea back to Miriam, her daughter was fully engaged in a conversation of sorts with the man opposite. He chatted to her, answering what he imagined might be her babbling questions in a voice that suggested a lifetime’s experience of communication with infants, and Dorothy was thrown. Whatever qualities she had this man marked down as possessing, child-whispering wasn’t amongst them. So intently were he and Miriam absorbed by each other that Dorothy almost felt it would be rude to interrupt. She just sat there, holding Miriam tightly, and smiled as she waited for one or other of them to notice her. The man broke gaze first.
‘This child is an absolute delight,’ he said. ‘And clearly so intelligent. It’s in their eyes, you know. That’s where the clever ones always give themselves away.’
As he spoke, Dorothy thought she could see a sadness hidden deep in his face, like a clue in a work of art, and she wondered what his story was.
‘Thank you,’ she said. There didn’t seem much else to say.
Securing Miriam with one arm, she lifted her cup to her lips, blowing on the tea and then drinking a healthy mouthful. There was no sipping at a drink when a baby was involved. You drank it fast if you wanted it hot.
Miriam lost interest in the man, turning her attention instead to the fabric of Dorothy’s dress. Dorothy, however, found her own gaze still drawn to him as if he were creating his own gravitational pull. Her eyes skimmed over his chest and up, pausing briefly at a small piece of tissue paper attached to a cut on his neck. As her eyes travelled up his face, she was horrified to find that he was watching her too but with what felt like an objective interest, as if she were a model he intended to sketch. His eyes drank in her face, mapping it out in minute precision and with no obvious embarrassment at having been caught staring at her. Dorothy, feeling her cheeks flare, pulled her attention away to Miriam, pointing out the sugar pourer on the table and then instantly regretting it when Miriam wanted to play and expressed her displeasure at having the pourer taken from her with a quick screech. When Dorothy chanced another look, the man was still watching. This time she met his stare, her head raised defiantly. I am a happily married woman, she hoped her expression said, and you are most impertinent to be staring at me in this manner. What she was really thinking was how the concentric circles of grey in his eyes seemed to draw her in, like a hypnotist’s watch.
She must stop this. Frank had only just gone and here she was looking closely enough at another man to see the details of his eyes. He was well put together, though: not handsome as such, more . . . attractive than handsome. Was that the word? Attractive? He was certainly attracting both her and Miriam. Dorothy turned in her seat so she could no longer see him and focused her attention entirely on her daughter. She was not in the business of being attracted to strangers in cafés. That was absolutely not her business at all.
III
After that first meeting, Dorothy found that she kept seeing the man all over the place. He wasn’t stalking her, she was sure. It was just that having once been raised in her consciousness, she was surprised at how many places they seemed to have in common, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed him before.
The first time was outside the greengrocer’s, when Dorothy had popped out to buy cabbage for Frank’s tea. She had parked the pram outside the shop whilst she went in, and when she came back the man was in full conversation with a gurgling Miriam. He stepped back sharply when she appeared, as if worried that he might have caused offence. Whilst it was certainly unusual for a man to show an interest in her baby, Dorothy wasn’t a bit offended, especially when she saw who it was.
‘Hello again,’ he said, lifting his hat to her. ‘I was just catching up on the news with your delightful daughter.’
‘Miriam,’ said Dorothy, and then when he looked a little lost she clarified,
‘My daughter’s name is Miriam. I’m Dorothy. How do you do?’
Dorothy held out her hand formally and the man took it and shook it.
‘StJohn,’ he said.
‘That’s an unusual name,’ said Dorothy before she could stop herself. She felt her cheeks go a little pink, hoping that he didn’t think her impertinent.
‘It’s a nuisance,’ said the man. ‘If I say it they can’t spell it and if they read it they can’t pronounce it. My mother has a lot to answer for.’
He smiled and Dorothy remembered how fascinating she had found his grey eyes the last time they’d met.
‘Well, I must be getting on,’ she said briskly, cross with herself for letting her gaze linger longer on his eyes than she had meant to. ‘Nice to meet you, again.’ And she pushed the pram back towards home, wondering if he was watching her but not wanting to turn round just in case.
The next time she saw him, she and Miriam were in the park. The weather was a little warmer now, and Dorothy had taken a blanket and a picnic of sorts. She settled herself on the grass beneath a spreading oak at the far end, away from the main path, where it was quiet. The leaves were just starting to bud and the sunlight was pushing its way through the branches and leaving stripes of light across the tartan. Dorothy enjoyed the feeling of space. Their garden was all well and good but there was no getting away from the passers-by or Marjorie from next door. A picnic held there would quickly become everybody else’s business and she didn’t want that.
Miriam had reached the stage where she could sit reliably but was still unable to crawl. Dorothy would recognise this as a golden moment with her other children but this first time she was still in blissful ignorance of just how all-consuming a child on the move under its own steam could be. Miriam played happily with a box of bricks, piling them up and knocking them down and each time squealing with delight as if she had no idea what was coming next. It wasn’t that exciting for Dorothy but she was happy to snatch moments of calm whenever she could.
Miriam had just knocked her tower down for the umpteenth time when Dorothy heard a voice to her left.
‘Good afternoon.’
It was the man from the café, StJohn.
‘Hello,’ she said, straightening her skirt so that less of her legs was visible.
‘Beautiful day,’ he added, and Dorothy, judging that this was so apparent that it didn’t require comment, just nodded. ‘And little Miriam is doing very well with those bricks. How old is she now?’
‘Six months,’ replied Dorothy proudly. Every one of those months had been a challenge to get through and she wore each of them like a badge of honour.
‘And still bright as a button,’ he added.
‘Well, I can’t be saying that for sure,’ Dorothy replied modestly.
‘They say it’s hard, looking after a baby,’ the man said. ‘Not that I know much about it but I can imagine it might be. One small little being demanding all your attention day and night. I’m sure it’s exhausting.’
Dorothy looked up at him gratefully. This stranger had perceived in a matter of seconds what Frank seemed unable to grasp. Having babies was hard. It was boring and monotonous and relentless and there was absolutely no escape from it.
‘It is,’ she said. ‘No one tells you that!’ She smiled but he didn’t speak, seemingly expecting her to go on. ‘I’ve no family here. My mother is away at home in Ireland. I speak to her on the telephone, you know, but it’s not like having someone on the doorstep to help out. And my husband is gone so often. With his work, that is.’
She felt herself blush. She shouldn’t do Frank down, not to this stranger, but something about the way he smiled at her made her feel like he was a kindred spirit of sorts. He got it, she could tell. The struggles that she had, how she battled with her concerns that she wasn’t actually a very good mother, that she wasn’t designed to be one, even.
‘I can’t begin to imagine how tough it must be,’ he said.
‘And how about you?’ she asked, turning the attention away from herself. ‘What do you do?’ As she spoke it crossed her mind that she kept seeing him during the day. Maybe he didn’t have a job.
‘Oh, I keep myself busy,’ was his infuriatingly vague reply. ‘With gardens, mainly,’ he added.
‘Would you like to join me?’ Dorothy said. ‘I have some digestives and there’s plenty of tea in the flask.’ It was presumptuous of her to ask, forward even, but who was there to see and anyway she so badly needed someone to talk to.
‘Well, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I have a moment or two to spare.’
He kneeled down on the blanket, Miriam sitting between them like a chaperone, and Dorothy poured tea into the lid of the flask and passed it to him.
They stayed there, chatting for almost an hour, until Miriam became fractious and wanted a feed. He asked her about her childhood in Ireland and she told him how she had come over to England to work as a secretary and had met Frank at the paper. He listened to her attentively, his grey eyes never really leaving her face, and she enjoyed just sharing. When her story made him laugh she delighted in it and embellished things just to please him, becoming more and more animated as she went along. It was as if the silence of all those months since she’d given up her work were being banished now in one afternoon of chatter.
Finally, he stood up.
‘I must go,’ he said. ‘But I’ve so enjoyed our conversation. Perhaps we could meet again?’
Without missing a beat Dorothy said, ‘I come here most days, if it’s not raining.’
That was all right, she thought. It wasn’t as if she were making an actual arrangement but if they happened to bump into one another again for a little gentle conversation, who was going to mind?
As StJohn strolled back down the path and Dorothy gathered up Miriam’s toys, she thought how much she had enjoyed his conversation. He was such a gentle man, so very different from Frank, and he understood her struggles. And right now that meant more to her than anything else.
MIRIAM – 1977
I
Miriam stood in front of the full-length mirror and twisted her face in fear. Her neck straining at an unnatural angle, she arched her back and stretched out her arms in supplication.
‘Please don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘I’ll do anything you want but please don’t kill me.’
She fell to her knees, closed her eyes and slowly toppled on to her side, her head barely missing the corner of the bed. She lay still for a moment, savouring this moment of death. Then gradually, as if unsure whether or not to break the atmosphere, the crowd began to clap, quietly at first and then the riot of noise filled her head and . . .
‘Miriam. What do you think you’re doing down there, girl? I was nearly falling on top of you. For all that’s holy, stand up and help me with this laundry.’
Miriam came to sitting and smiled broadly at her mother.
‘I was practising dying, Mum. Was I good? I was trying to imagine what that woman felt, Patricia Atkinson, the one that got murdered in Bradford. I wish there’d been more on the telly about how she actually died. It would make it loads easier for me to act it.’
‘Miriam!’ Her mother crossed herself and then gawped at her, horror written all over her face.
That’s another one to store in the old memory banks, thought Miriam.
‘How can you be thinking such terrible thoughts? And you a good Catholic girl.’
‘Come on, Mum. You can’t claim that for us? When was the last time we went to Mass? We didn’t even go at Christmas last year.’
‘I know and I am ashamed to the very bones of me,’ said her mother, shaking her head regretfully. ‘But once a Catholic, always a Catholic. The good Lord won’t be forgetting you now, will he? He’ll know what’s going on in that fluffy head of yours, make no mistake. And pretending to be dead women is something He won’t be liking.’
‘I’m not pretending,’ said Miriam indignantly. ‘Really, Mum. Pretending? It’s acting.’
‘And what is acting, pray tell, apart from pretending that you’re someone that you’ve no business being?’
Her mother put her hand to the small of her back and puffed out her lips.
‘I’ve no energy today,’ she said as she flopped down on Miriam’s bed. ‘All my get up and go has got up and gone and I’ve so much to do. I swear, if I sat down and wrote a list of all the things that fell to me in this house, I’d still be writing when hell freezes over. I don’t know where your father is. He went out to get some string to fasten up the bunting. That was two hours ago. No sign of him. He thinks I won’t notice, what with all the rushing around that I’m doing, but I’ll smell it on his breath when he gets back, you see if I don’t. He spends more time in that pub every passing year. And Clare’s in one of her moods again. I simply asked if she could mop the floor without leaving sticky patches. You’d think I’d asked her to cut her own arm off. The cheek of the girl! Your grandfather would be spinning in his grave if he could hear the way my own children talk to me.’
Miriam wasn’t listening. She was watching the way her mother’s mouth formed her words, how her eyebrows shot up whenever she felt something stingingly. Store it all up, Miriam. Store it up.
‘And there’s all the food to think about. Anyone would think that this party’s going to organise itself, so they would. Well, I can’t be thinking about that yet. I need to get everything straight first. So, will you help me do the ironing? It makes my back ache something chronic, leaning over that board all day long. I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days. It’s like someone came down and stole away all my energy. It must be my age. Or the change.’ She shuddered.