The Night Village

by Zoe Deleuil

  ‘Nice to meet you, Simone.’ Now he extended a thin, yellowed hand with long, black-rimmed nails. It took all of my social conditioning to offer my own and shake his, and not wipe my hand on my coat immediately afterwards.

  ‘What’s your name again?’

  ‘Simone.’

  ‘And what’s my name again?’

  ‘Your name is Brett.’ I kept my voice neutral. Was he saying that to remind himself of a fake name, or to unsettle me? Or both?

  ‘And what are you up to today, Simone?’ His voice was slightly slower than normal, without inflection.

  ‘Nothing much. Out for a walk, you know.’ I scanned the museum gardens but they were empty. ‘What are you up to?’ I went on, gaining some time to plan my exit. I prised the baby off my breast, as discreetly as I could, turning away from him and buttoning my coat up to the neck.

  ‘Well, I’ve been away but I’m back now, so I’m here hanging out. A bit of a drink, a bit of a wander. A lot of people won’t talk to me, Simone. Snobs, you know?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You don’t seem like a snob, though. You seem like a good girl.’

  Never meet their eye was a policy that had mostly kept me safe in London, but this one had caught me unguarded, and there was no-one nearby to rescue me. He was after something; I could see that in his eyes, which were fixed on me with a combination of desperation and cunning.

  ‘I – uh,’ holding the baby with one hand, I flicked up the brake of the pram and stood in one swift movement. ‘I think I’m going to get going now.’

  Pushing the pram with one hand, I moved away from him, not looking back, towards the museum, where there would be people and security guards.

  ‘Am I annoying you?’ he called after me, but the social obligation to talk, to shake hands, was successfully broken, and I was putting distance between us, no longer looking at him, no longer touching his skin, no longer answering his questions, and thinking how annoying it was that, even after having a baby, I still hadn’t managed to escape that particular breed of weird, persistent men who bothered women they didn’t know in public places. I would’ve thought that with motherhood, at least I’d be done with them.

  9

  Inside the dark museum, I felt safe, protected by the protocols of a public space and the security guard at the door. Through the door I could see Brett, sitting there, bolt upright, staring at nothing. He looked sad, and not the slightest bit threatening. But you never knew. Probably he did need help, a sympathetic ear, but from health professionals, not me. I tried not to feel guilty or to blame myself for the interaction, which had played out in various ways since I was a child. Why couldn’t a woman sit in a park, on her own, without some man bothering her, thinking he could ask her questions, and tell her things, and comment on her appearance or demand that she smile, or cheer up, or give an account of herself? And what kind of parenting would produce a man like that? Another thought for three am.

  The baby stared up at me, drowsy and currently not needing anything, but that wouldn’t last. I already had a little man right here, waking me up and wanting things from me. Why should I put up with adults I didn’t even know demanding my attention too? There was a certain quality I’d seen in mothers, a kind of don’t-fuck-with-me diamond fury, and suddenly it was mine, too. It settled in me and warmed me from within.

  I walked across the white floor, tiled in a black-and-white fish-scale pattern, and peered at a small sign informing me that women prisoners in Woking Gaol had made the tiles in the 1860s. And wasn’t there something so sad about that, the thought of women working on the floors of a childhood museum they would never see for themselves, or take their children to? My eyes prickled with tears. Why was everything so poignant, all of a sudden? A moment ago I’d been furious. The pamphlet the health visitor had left behind referred sweetly to baby blues and hormonal changes, but this felt like more than the blues. It was as if all the sadness of the world, all its loss and grief and misery, was passing through my veins like a churning polluted stream. I wiped away my tears impatiently as I packed the baby back into the pram. I was being ridiculous. How could I save those women prisoners? I couldn’t even get myself to sleep anymore.

  Like a nocturnal animal with painfully sensitive eyes, I gravitated towards the first floor, where the lighting was low, the carpet dark and felt-like, the walls painted a soft dusky purple. There I found toys and square red and yellow cushions scattered across the floor, and when I looked into the pram the baby’s dark grey eyes met mine in solemn silence. As I brought him out, he took in the colours, blinking in the dimness as I walked around, looking at the displays.

  Eventually, at the furthest corner of the gallery, we came across a village of dollhouses, dozens of them, in a tightly grouped huddle on a hillside of plain white crates, each one lit from within as if it were the middle of the night. There was something quiet and welcoming about them. I thought back to the other night when I’d been alone with the baby and had looked out at that one lit window, imagining some young couple behind it. That night, I’d felt alone. But looking at all of these houses, this closely gathered night village, it occurred to me that perhaps it had been a mother in that lit room, someone like me, alone with her wakeful baby. Every night, a whole scattered village of parents across London kept vigil with their wakeful children. Sitting in steamy bathrooms with a coughing baby. Walking the floor, heating up a bottle or rocking a fretful newborn, awaiting some unknown point in the night when sleep would descend.

  This dark village reminded me of the Nocturnal House at the zoo back home, where they kept the native marsupials and nightjars and owls. The subdued, furry night-time feel of it. How as soon as you entered you felt more alert, but also quieter, protected by the dark.

  On my lap, the baby stared at the houses, blinking and mesmerised. And then I became aware of someone standing beside me. Looking up, I saw it was Jennifer again.

  ‘It’s a new world for him, isn’t it? All so fascinating.’

  The baby looked up at her, startled then interested, staring at her face and moving his head at the sound of her necklace of pale-green glass beads clinking against each other as she sat down beside him. I turned him towards her and she played with him, meeting his eyes, stroking his nose. As she entertained him I zoned out, glad to have a moment to myself, staring at the village again.

  ‘They were donated by the artist Rachel Whiteread. She used to come here as a child, and always loved looking at our dollhouses. She collected these ones over twenty years, and then she gave them all to us.’

  ‘I’d like to crawl into one and go to sleep.’ I pointed out a Tudor house with yellow-lit windows. ‘That one.’

  She laughed. ‘And how are you doing? Apart from tired, obviously.’

  ‘Oh, not so bad. Still getting used to it all, I guess, but we are slowly finding our way, and he’s a good baby, he really is.’

  ‘You’re doing wonderfully well to get out of the house with a newborn. Isn’t she?’ she said to the baby. ‘And have you thought about joining a mothers group? I always found them quite nice, somewhere to go where you didn’t feel you had to apologise for your baby crying or making a fuss.’

  ‘No, but I will. I’ve been meaning to look into that.’

  She was right, of course. I stared at the village of dollhouses. Somewhere out there in the city were women who probably felt like I did. It was a matter of working out where they might be, where they gathered to be with others of their kind.

  ‘It’s a bit like a new job – you have to get to know your colleagues.’ She laughed. ‘Well, we’ve been busy here. Children in and out all day. So loud, I’ve had a headache, but that’s a children’s museum for you.’

  She got up again, slowly, and stared down at the baby. ‘He’s beautiful. So happy to be here, existing in this very moment.’ She shook her head and was quiet for a moment. ‘I need to remind myself of that, sometimes. Anyway, I’m going to go and have a cup of tea. Do you want one?’<
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  ‘Oh, I would love that. Thank you.’

  I followed her downstairs, past the French bridal doll in a greyish wedding dress, the African helicopter toy crafted from tin cans and the Venetian puppets in their faded silk costumes.

  We went through the double doors and back to her small square room, with its artwork and a new arrangement of fresh flowers on the desk – dark pink with jagged petals, mixed with little yellow-and-white daisies and leafy stems, all arranged in very pure-looking water in a glass vase. I wondered, did she buy them at some florist somewhere, and walk here with the blooms wrapped in brown paper and bundled in her arm the way I hold the baby? Why was I so fascinated by her? Maybe because I discovered her here, maybe because of the way she looked at me, mock-stern, eyes twinkling. Or perhaps it was the intuitive feeling that she might hold the answers to getting on with this new life.

  We chatted for a while, about news and the museum and London, while she made tea, then handed me a cup and sat down at her desk.

  ‘And how is it all going at home? Is your house guest still there?’

  It was as if she was reading my mind. There was something about her that was very direct. In that clear, pale skin and those small, bright eyes was someone I didn’t know, but I could talk to.

  ‘Rachel. Yes, she’s still there. She was out last night. My friend came to visit, to see the baby, and the two of them ended up going out until two in the morning.’

  ‘Hmm.’ It was a small sound, but sympathetic. ‘And meanwhile you’re at home with the baby.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I sipped my tea. ‘I mean, it’s fine. But I feel like my old life has gone and I don’t know what my new one is yet.’

  ‘They’re hard, those early days. I’ve been where you are, with a newborn. I remember it well. Lots of women have. But they don’t always talk about it.’

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone talk about it? Why doesn’t anyone warn you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Too tired, perhaps. Too unsure of what’s actually wrong. Worried about getting it wrong, when it’s meant to come so naturally. And when you see someone pregnant, you don’t want to scare them. I see lots of new mothers in here. So I offer a cup of tea and a chat. It’s nothing, really. I enjoy it. And I love seeing babies.’

  I wanted to tell her more about Rachel, about the uneasy feeling between us, how I didn’t quite know how to be myself around her, how it felt like there was something going on in the apartment that I knew nothing about, and how I was worried that actually, I was going crazy, through lack of sleep and wildly out-of-whack hormones.

  ‘Paul, my boyfriend, is at work a lot. I think maybe he feels the pressure of having a family to support, all of a sudden. He only took two weeks off and then he vanished. I thought he’d be around a bit more, I guess.’

  ‘And who is this Rachel again? His cousin, is that right?’

  ‘Yes. She moved to London and she’s staying with us until she gets settled. It’s fine, but she doesn’t really get it, I guess. She doesn’t have kids herself, so it’s a bit hard for her to understand what we’re going through, suddenly having this newborn.’

  ‘Will she be staying with you for long?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She didn’t really tell us she was coming and she hasn’t told us when she’ll go. But it’s weird, she wakes me up and doesn’t understand that I’m tired and she’s meant to be helping – she said she’d cook and clean and stuff – but she hasn’t done anything much.’

  ‘Do you think maybe she’s a bit jealous?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of you.’

  For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Then I laughed.

  ‘No! Not at all. Why would she be jealous of me? She’s got freedom, she’s got a career to get started, she’s got the whole of London to go out and discover. Why would she be jealous of this?’

  I gestured at myself, with my scraped-back hair and postnatal bulk, the weight of the pram I needed to drag everywhere. Or did she mean the baby? But that was ridiculous. The baby was mine, he was a part of me. Being jealous of the baby made about as much sense as her coveting my earlobes or feeling bitter about my appendix.

  ‘Maybe it hasn’t been as exciting as she thought it would be, coming here? Maybe what she actually wants is a baby herself. I’m not saying I know for sure. But I do know that in life you need to get used to the fact that people will be jealous of what you’ve got and what they don’t, whatever that might be. Because jealousy is a big emotion, worse than envy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Envy is feeling upset about what someone else has. Jealousy is wanting to take it from them.’

  I looked at the baby. If she was right, if part of being jealous was wanting to take from someone what made you feel that way, I needed to be careful. The thought made me feel weirdly threatened, like I needed to dull myself, mute whatever it was that was making Rachel jealous, to stop it bothering her. To be like a chameleon blending in with the branch behind it, fading to brown.

  ‘So how do I manage it? How do I get used to someone feeling jealous of me? Although I’m not sure that she is.’

  ‘To deal with someone’s jealousy, you need to understand that it’s their issue. It’s so much about them, and not about you, that there’s actually nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  We sat again in silence. The day was sunny now, all unbroken blue light. The trees were still bare, although I could see, faintly, buds appearing like messy little packages at the ends of branches.

  We stared at the baby, on my lap, and it reminded me of gazing at a fire or a flickering candle. He was beginning to wake up more, looking around, taking up more space. But right now, he was sleeping, and it was a serious sleep, like he was contemplating global matters behind those closed eyes.

  ‘Has she been looking for somewhere to live? Or a job?’

  ‘I don’t really know. The thing is, she has been helpful in some ways. She cooked a big dinner the other night, when Paul’s parents came to visit. But in a way, I don’t know what she’s actually doing here.’

  She was quiet for a moment. ‘But maybe it wouldn’t matter what she did. Maybe you need to be alone for a while with your baby, getting used to things?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s that. Part of me thinks, why am I complaining? I had a baby that was born healthy. She’s helping. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Well, however good you have it, it’s still a huge adjustment. Recovering from childbirth, however that happens, getting used to less sleep, all the hormonal changes. It’s huge. I remember it myself, and it was decades ago now!’

  ‘There’s all that too. I guess I get annoyed at myself for being disappointed by the birth. I keep going back to it. And I didn’t even expect it to go that well. I mean, there are definitely a few design flaws in the whole thing. But why am I still thinking about it all the time? The baby was healthy, why am I still dwelling on the birth?’

  She smiled. ‘Do you think that because you’ve got a healthy baby, nothing of what you went through matters?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I mean, it’s a bit like saying, well, you had a car crash on Tuesday that left you badly injured, but then you won the lotto later on that day, so why are you still lying down and trying to recover?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. What happened to you in childbirth does matter. And it’s understandable that you’re upset. It takes time to get over it. We used to have days in hospital to recover. You can be out now in six hours.’ She shook her head. ‘Honestly. If men had to give birth I imagine things would be somewhat different.’

  I watched her sorting through papers, discarding some into the metal bin under her desk, hole-punching and filing others, smoothing each filed page with her hand. Watching people handle paperwork or leaf through books had always mesmerised me, and I felt myself collapsing deeper into her soft leather armchair as the baby rested on my lap. She appeared to be packing up, to have fil
led some boxes, I noticed. And there seemed to be fewer paintings on the walls today than there had been last time.

  ‘Are you leaving here soon?’

  ‘Oh, getting organised, putting things in order. A bit of early spring cleaning …’ She smiled at me. ‘Everything will be easier when spring comes and you can walk in the park.’

  ‘Thank you. For letting me ramble on.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I still remember the women who talked to me when I had a new baby. It helped me to know it wasn’t going to be such a shock forever.’

  In the cold winter light, she looked older, and somehow smaller than the last time I was here. She looked like my grandmother, I realised, all her colours suddenly muted, her body taking up less room than before, the furniture appearing to grow larger around her.

  Don’t go, I found myself wanting to say, but I didn’t.

  Sleep deprivation had such strange side effects. One was that I had no sense of what to say anymore. Not that I was ever especially skilled at making that judgement beforehand, but now it was like I couldn’t manage subtlety, I couldn’t do humour or irony. I could ask and answer basic questions, and that was about it.

  As I said goodbye, settling the baby in the pram, she was still sitting there, smiling at me, her room a warm pool of light that I closed the door on reluctantly before stepping into the dark, chilly corridor.

  I wish I knew what Rachel was doing here, I thought again, as I manoeuvred the pram out onto the street. She said she wanted to help, yet she wasn’t helping much. I pictured her appearing at the door at dawn and taking the baby away until morning so I could sleep, but I didn’t see that happening, nor did I want it to. I wanted to learn how to look after the baby myself; it was my job, it was what I’d signed up for. No-one could do it for me, let alone someone who was out drinking until three in the morning.