Motherlove

by Thorne Moore

  The car park was full. Martin found a space at last, at the end furthest from the store. Heather bustled to get Bibs out. Why did he have to wriggle so much?

  ‘Just keep still, will you! Hold my hand.’

  A long long walk, not what Bibs fancied. He started to drag, leaning back until he was almost sitting on the tarmac. ‘Bibs! Don’t do that! Come on.’

  ‘I don’t want to!’

  ‘Come on, old son.’ Martin hoisted him on his shoulders. The easy casual solution as if her irritation was totally unreasonable.

  Bibs was installed in the trolley-come-pushchair. This was the bit he always liked, being pushed up and down the aisles, while she plodded on with aching back and ankles. He was quite old enough to walk beside her, but it was safer having him in the trolley. At least she knew where he was.

  Up and down the aisles – that was a joke today. Jabbing and squeezing into the first aisle was as much as she could bear. She picked up a bag of tangerines and stopped. Enough.

  ‘You read the list, I’ll get them,’ said Martin.

  ‘Bananas, grapes, onions, potatoes, carrots, Brussels.’ Why Brussels? No one liked them. Why waste money on something no one liked and she didn’t want to cook. ‘Oh for God’s sake, can’t we just have beans on toast and have done with it?’

  Martin chuckled, as if she were joking. She leaned on the trolley as he dropped a monstrous net bag of Brussels sprouts into it.

  Milk, cream, cheddar, brie, Bibs’ yoghurts, bread, biscuits, mince pies… Martin dropped a multipack of crisps into the trolley. Bibs, bored with singing and kicking, started to open it.

  ‘Not yet, Bibs!’

  He ignored her.

  ‘Not yet!’ Other shoppers, crammed against her, were looking at her. ‘Leave it alone!’ She snatched the bag from him.

  Bibs reached for it again. She held it out of his reach, nearly hitting an old lady beside her. Bibs jumped up and down in the trolley, then fished out a packet of biscuits and dropped it on the floor.

  ‘Bibs! You’re not a bloody baby!’

  She wanted to hit him. She never hit him, she didn’t believe in hitting children, but she wanted to hit him now.

  People pushed past, no one stopped to help. She wasn’t bending down to retrieve the biscuits; they could bloody well stay there and be trampled.

  Triumphant in his victory, Bibs had a packet of eggs. She yanked them from him, feeling one crack inside. ‘Stop it! Do you hear me? Just stop it!’

  Was she screaming? Everyone seemed to be looking at her. Then Martin was there, with a pack of beer. ‘Hey, hey, hey. Come on. Bibs, put that down now.’ He removed the eggs to the front of the trolley, out of Bibs’ reach. ‘Be a good boy for your mummy, or she might not give you a little brother or sister.’

  ‘Don’t want one,’ said Bibs.

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Bibs. ‘Don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t.’

  ‘Well, tough,’ hissed Heather, ‘because you’re stuck with it, just like me.’

  Martin was still chuckling. ‘Don’t put it like that. You make it sound as if you don’t want it.’

  ‘I don’t bloody want it! Who ever bothered to ask me if I did? We didn’t plan it and we can’t afford it, and we’re stuck out here, and it’s all very well for you going gooey-eyed over another fucking baby, but I’m the one breaking my back here. I’ll be the one in hospital having my insides ripped apart. I’ll be the one stuck with filthy bloody nappies, day in day out, listening to the bloody thing bawl its head off.’

  Was she shouting? Screaming? Shocked faces were staring at her. Martin stood open-mouthed. Look at them all, bloody strangers telling her that she didn’t count, all that mattered was this thing inside her. She didn’t want it. She just wanted to be rid of everything. In a rage she hadn’t realised she was capable of, she thrust the laden trolley from her, sending it charging down the aisle.

  Sailing between the parting shoppers, Bibs stared back at her, a whimper already beginning. His chariot collided with a pyramid display, sending jars of mincemeat flying with a sickening shatter of glass.

  iii

  Lindy

  ‘Gi’s a kiss then. C’mon,’ he said, unkempt and unwashed, his stubble dark with dirt.

  Lindy turned her head to avoid his whisky-soaked breath, and wriggled under his arm, braced against the wall. ‘Geroff me, Tyler.’

  ‘Aw, c’mon,’ he said to the wall, not realising that she was no longer there. Pissed out of his tiny mind as usual.

  Lindy was already climbing the narrow stairs to the first floor landing, and the safety of her own room. The lock was crap, but she could put a chair under the handle if Tyler followed. Time was, she used to bound up these stairs out of his reach, but today she was too weary. And too bulky. She hauled herself up, listening, ready to kick out if he tried to grab her.

  Nothing. She looked back. At the bottom of the stairs, Tyler had slid to the floor and was mumbling into his chest. So maybe there’d be a racket and things flying when he woke up, but for now she’d have a bit of peace. No one else in the house was stirring. They didn’t usually emerge until after dark.

  She pulled back the curtains. Dark January gloom. She didn’t like to have the lamp on in the day. Or the heating. It was fucking freezing, but the electric fire ate money up, and she only had one 50p left. When she saw him coming, she’d switch it on for a few minutes, but better without for now.

  Her coat was good and thick. And voluminous. Wide enough to wrap round an army, which was the point of course. Anyone looking at her would think she was nine months gone with triplets. She unbuttoned it and began to empty the improvised sack beneath. Soup packets. Pot noodles. Biscuits. Three apples. They were healthy, fruit and stuff, she knew that, though she’d picked them because they were easy to slip inside. Like the packet of dishcloths she’d taken, because they had been there and easy.

  She had a basket too, tinned stuff and a bottle of milk. You had to buy something if you spent half an hour wandering round a shop, or people would look at you funny when you came out. Fastest way to get stopped, that. So she had bought a tin of beans, a tin of ham and four cans of the cheapest lager. 50p left for the meter. If Gary did come home today, he’d find food in the cupboard, and a beer waiting for him. It made her feel competent, a useful little housewife. Maybe he’d be glad to be home with her again.

  No need to think about what he was more likely to feel when he saw her.

  She smoothed down the old quilt covering the mattress on the floor. With one of the new dishcloths she wiped down the formica table, the cupboard, and the one-ring Baby Belling. She used the worn brush to thwack the armchair free of dust – not too hard in case it lost more stuffing. She liked housework, this making-a-home game, even if she only had one room to play it in.

  All she needed now was for him to arrive. It might not be today; the grapevine might have got it wrong. And he might be going somewhere else first. With a quiver, she thought: he might not choose to come here at all, ever again.

  But no, she trusted Gary Bagley to come back to her because there was really no point in thinking anything else. You had to hope, or there was nothing.

  Pulling her coat back round her, she dragged one of the vinyl-covered kitchen chairs to the window and huddled down, leaning on the rotten sill and watching the street for any sign of him. Gary Bagley, her man. Her family.

  A family was what Lindy Crowe wanted. A nest, safe from the hostile world, with someone she could wrap herself around. There had been a family once, six siblings and Mum and Dad, though she had been too young to remember the drunken screaming and shouting that ended with her father knifing her mother. Maybe she hungered to find a family again because she couldn’t remember. Foster homes hadn’t counted, even when fosterers had meant well. They had just been alien beings who had separated her from her brother Jimmy. He was the next youngest and they’d been real friends, but no one cared about that. The Home was
nothing like a family. Staff too busy for anyone, and Wayne Price and his gang doing whatever they liked to the younger kids, especially the girls. Lindy had run away at ten, then at twelve, then fourteen, and had been on her own since, living rough or in squats, getting by with shoplifting and begging and tricks. Then Gary. He hadn’t made everything perfect, but she had never expected that. It was enough that he called her his girl and brought her here, to 128 Nelson Street, to a house that they could pretend was home.

  In some distant past, someone had turned it into bedsitters. Someone must still be paying someone rent, because the electricity meters worked, and the water was still connected, though the dozen residents treated it as a squat. She and Gary had this room. They shared the bathroom, though the bath had no plug, and the people in the basement used the bog out back, and Tyler on the ground floor usually just peed in the hall.

  It was all Lindy had ever hoped for. Nothing like spending a couple of winter weeks in a shop doorway down Almeida Lane without a penny in your pocket, with a broken heel and a black eye, to teach you that a roof, any roof, a bed, any bed, and something, anything to eat, is the best life has to offer.

  Something to eat. She realised she hadn’t eaten since the chocolate bar she’d nicked that morning. Must be the excitement of Gary coming back. She ought to eat. She took a couple of biscuits and one of the apples. Then she returned to her window perch to wait.

  Nelson Road in the twilight. Lamps coming on, shifting it into a different dimension. All through the day it rumbled with traffic taking the short cut away from the endless traffic lights on Moreton Road. Hardly any pedestrians, drab old houses silent. Then at night the residents awoke. Where were they during the day, she wondered. Some must have jobs because at night the pavements were blocked with parked cars. Others collected like moths around the laundrette, the betting shop and the two pubs. At night, vans came and went from the yard that was padlocked by day, with Alsatians growling behind the metal gates. At night, figures gathered on the corner with Heighton Street and exchanged money and packets. Lindy knew them by sight if not by name. Gary used to send her with a wad of notes to deal with them for him. He’d let her try stuff with him sometimes, though mostly he only gave her a bit of weed. She didn’t mind. It was just him she wanted.

  A figure was coming down the street in the gloom. Hands thrust into pockets, feet kicking at anything within reach. Hood up. Hope, then disappointment. He passed under a street lamp and she could see it wasn’t Gary.

  Should she have gone to meet him? Last time she’d seen him, she told him she’d be here waiting for him, and he’d grinned and said, ‘You’d better be.’

  An old battered Cortina screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. A bloke climbed out of the back and smacked the top before the car hurtled on down the road.

  It was Gary! Gary was home! She was up, leaning against the window, rapping on the glass, pleading for him to look up.

  He saw her, raised a finger to tell her to wait, then turned aside to speak to Mick Crier who was passing with his Rottweiler.

  He had seen her! She got up, switched on the fire and looked around wondering what else she could do to welcome him. She kept her coat on.

  She heard swearing as he passed Tyler, kicking him out of the way. Running up the stairs. Door swinging open.

  ‘Gary!’ She rushed to him, wrapping her arms round him. He brushed her aside, so he could push into the room. Cropped hair, stocky, less weight on him than when he’d gone inside. The same good looks though. The same cocky confidence in those looks and in his ability to survive. Her man.

  ‘Gary, I didn’t know if it was today or not. Drake said you was coming out. I would have come to meet you. Oh Gary!’ She wanted to cling to him again, but he held her casually back, grabbing and swigging a lager. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and turned to look round. At her, briefly, with his old grin, then round the room, nodding, accepting that it would do.

  ‘All right, all right. No need to fuss. Got out this morning. So, you pleased to see me then, girl?’

  ‘Oh Gary, I been that desperate without you.’ No, he wouldn’t want to hear about her troubles. ‘But you’re home now. I’d have come more but when they moved you I couldn’t afford the fare.’

  He laughed. ‘Always were fucking useless on your own. Never mind, eh. Home now. You going to give me a kiss or what?’

  She rushed to him, arms thoughtlessly wide, coat swinging open.

  She stopped, at his expression.

  ‘You. Stupid. Bitch.’

  ‘Gary…’

  ‘Stupid fucking bitch. Who’ve you been screwing then, while I’ve been inside?’

  ‘No one, Gary, honest.’

  ‘Don’t you lie to me. Don’t try and tell me it’s mine.’

  ‘It is, Gary. I promise. I wasn’t with no one else.’

  ‘Oh no? How d’you get by then, without me, if you weren’t on the game?’

  ‘I got a job, Gary. Cleaning offices. Honest. Until I started getting sick and they dumped me. ‘Cos of this.’ She looked down at her swollen belly, pushing out the over-tight sweater.

  ‘You stupid cow.’ He snarled at her lump. ‘It’s not mine.’ He stared at her with the look he used on customers who wouldn’t pay up.

  She didn’t dare reply, just waited.

  ‘Are you so fucking stupid you didn’t think of getting rid of it?’

  ‘I didn’t know how, Gary. Didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Stupid cow! Well, you can fucking get rid of it now.’

  ‘I can’t, Gary.’ She was half crying, half pleading, knowing that neither would work with him. He didn’t like whiney women. ‘It’s too late. They won’t do an abortion or nuffin’ now.’

  ‘I told you, get rid of it, bitch.’ Here it came. She could see the explosion rippling up within him, bursting out at last. ‘Or I’ll get rid of it for you.’

  Even in the middle of the night it was never quite dark in the room, because of the street light outside and the thin curtains, but the light was softer tonight in the freezing fog. Lindy shivered under the quilt and tried to get more comfortable on the mattress, rubbing her feet up and down to warm them. No Gary to share his body’s heat. He was out, she didn’t know where. Didn’t know if he was coming back. She’d asked but he was still too mad to reply.

  Maybe it would make a difference if she lost the baby. She might. He’d punched her so hard she’d almost passed out. But she hadn’t started bleeding or nothing. Now she didn’t know what to do. There were ways of dealing with babies, other girls had told her, but that was for when you first got pregnant, not for when you were eight months gone. Things she just hadn’t done. Like she hadn’t accepted Carver’s help. What if Gary found out about that? He’d be that mad.

  Carver was the bloke upstairs. Top Dog. She was always a bit afraid of him. No, really afraid. Big black guy with eyes like bullets. Nobody messed with Carver, not even Gary. She’d delivered stuff for him now and again, because he’d asked, politely, and she’d pretended it was fine, too terrified to refuse. But mostly she ducked out of sight if she saw him first. Then one day he’d caught her on the stairs, looked her over, and asked her what she was going to do. Like she had choices.

  She couldn’t tell Gary that. Couldn’t tell him that Carver had asked her if she wanted to him to fix something up for her. Or that she had shaken her head. Better let Gary believe she’d been just too stupid to know what to do.

  Perhaps she was stupid. Lindy couldn’t understand her own impulses. What happened in this world, or at least what happened to her, just happened. No rhyme or reason, no good or bad. So, lying alone on her mattress, she just hoped that Gary would forgive her and accept the baby because it was too late to put right her mistake. She never paused to think that maybe she had said no because she, Lindy Crowe, actually wanted the baby. She had been too useless to get rid of it, but not too useless, in her own small way, to look after herself and the spark of life within her.
She’d stopped drinking – couldn’t afford it, could she? Hardly ever smoked. Tried to remember to eat. Had dreams sometimes about holding her baby, cuddling it, having its fingers grab hers. Someone of her very own to offer her the one thing she had ever craved.

  It was Gary’s, whatever he said. She hadn’t been sleeping around while he was inside, at least not for the first four months. She hadn’t slept around before, neither, not once she’d moved in with him, though he’d kept telling her his friends would pay good money if she gave them one. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to do that anymore. She would have done it, for him, in the end, but he was still bullying her about it when he’d got done for demanding money with menaces. Leaving her to cope all alone.

  She’d started off well. Got a job, night cleaning. Greg paid her cash in hand and she’d enjoyed it, working through the night hours with old Sal, in brightly lit offices like another world. She was good at it too, sweeping, cleaning, polishing, making things neat and pretty. And even if Greg wasn’t quite legal, it was like Christmas every week, knowing there’d be cash at the end of it. But then she’d starting throwing up and showing and Greg had told her to get lost and she was stuffed, in every possible sense. She was driven back to the inevitable round of prostitution and shoplifting. Not that many men were that keen for a fuck with a pregnant woman. Shoplifting was easier though. No one thought twice about her bulges.

  She’d signed on too. She hadn’t dared try before because they’d have just put her back in care. But now she was seventeen, they couldn’t send her back, so a month ago she’d finally made it into the Job Centre, and found herself filling in a load of forms. Did she have a permanent place of residence? Yes! What rent did she pay? None. She shouldn’t have said that. Did she have a partner? Yes, but he was in prison. Name, age, date of birth, National Insurance number… She didn’t know nothing about half of it, all the questions and the boxes and the haranguing woman with big shoulders and steel glasses who looked at her like she was a worm. It was all just another of those processes that happened to Lindy, inflicted by other people, the usual round of meaningless battering. But she had emerged with the promise of a giro and leaflets on maternity welfare. Not bad for all that bother. The money didn’t go far, but it was regular, enough for some food and light and weed, and a bit of heat if she was careful, and with an occasional bit of shoplifting, she got by. Waiting for Gary to come home.