The Night Village

by Zoe Deleuil

  ‘No,’ I said again. I was frozen, unable to think or move. One thing was certain: we were both useless in an emergency.

  A woman waiting in the queue behind me, in a calm voice, said, ‘Retrace your steps.’

  Before she had finished her sentence I was already running back through the shop, to where I’d started, in the fruit and vegetable area.

  Nothing.

  On to the meat aisle, where I’d rearranged my basket, and there, right beside the free-range chickens, I burst into a small crowd that had gathered around my neat little pram. Inside, the baby was awake and blinking up at the faces, looking surprisingly well cared for, given he had been abandoned in a city supermarket by his own mother. Falling upon the pram, I leaned in towards him, amazed that everything had gone from nightmarish to normal in twenty seconds, and soon he was in my arms.

  A voice interrupted our reunion, which was actually just me holding him and gazing blissfully into his eyes, and after a beat or two I realised it was directed at me. I met the eyes of a woman in a Sainsbury’s uniform, a walkie-talkie in one hand, looking at me with a mixture of outrage and disbelief.

  ‘You are very, very lucky, young lady. We were minutes away from calling in Social Services. What on earth were you thinking?’

  She talked loudly, as if for the benefit of the crowd that had gathered around the pram, all delighted to interrupt their tedious food shop for a bit of real-life drama unfolding right there in the chicken section. I almost laughed. Except that she’d mentioned Social Services. They had the power to take babies away from their homes, and often did.

  A quiet, rational part of me took over.

  ‘I have barely slept for weeks,’ I told her.

  The crowd was hushed, and I could sense, rather than see, them all waiting for her response.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, maybe you should be at home in bed,’ she said, sounding more reasonable.

  ‘Oh, I should definitely be in bed, but I have to eat.’ Taking hold of the pram handle, I felt the baby become mine again, no longer an abandoned orphan in the custody of this woman. ‘And I feel bad enough, you know,’ I threw over my shoulder. She said nothing, but looked a little more understanding.

  What was it with the hostility of this city? I was sure my mother had once left me at a supermarket checkout in my wicker basket and when she’d returned they’d only laughed and said they’d been wondering when she was coming back. Perhaps I looked like I wasn’t coping. Or maybe it was my appearance; maybe I needed some better clothes, a smarter pram. I bet that woman would have been nicer to Paul. She would have patted his arm and assured him that he was a wonderful father and nobody’s perfect. And Rachel, with her refined accent and graceful height and ballerina face, that woman would have been nicer to her, too.

  The ogling crowd separated as I mowed through it, racing back to the checkout, wanting to get away from the judgement and the slim possibility of professionally sympathetic social workers materialising with their clipboards and hidden agendas. The woman who had told me to retrace my steps was still standing in line, my groceries still piled up on the conveyor belt in front of hers.

  ‘Thank you so much. I don’t know how I did that,’ I said to her.

  And unlike the other woman, she was matter of fact and reassuring as she shrugged and said, ‘You have your mind on other things. You’re thinking about home, about getting out of here.’ Her low voice, with its lilting accent, reminded me of Gloria, the unflappable Ghanaian midwife I’d seen for prenatal appointments at the GP clinic.

  The checkout operator scanned my shopping without comment and I packed everything into the bottom of the pram and paid as quickly as I could, keeping my head down. I’d certainly given myself a shiny new and completely unasked-for emergency scenario to dwell on tonight as I tried to drift off to sleep. Someone could have kidnapped him, slipped away with him forever, sold him to child traffickers, even, while I was wandering in a fog through those long aisles. Anything could have happened. But it hadn’t. Not this time.

  As I passed the second-hand shop on the way to the bus stop I remembered my bag of clothes, tucked in the bottom of the pram under all my shopping, and wheeled the pram into the warm mothball fug of old clothes, passing racks crammed with nylon evening dresses, heavily discounted jeans and faded t-shirts, and baskets of vinyl belts and handbags that barricaded the jewellery-cluttered counter.

  I used to love vintage shops back in Australia, where over the years I’d found embroidered Chinese silk dressing gowns and pure wool jumpers and silver-threaded Indian skirts and antique hardback books. I could spend hours rummaging in their crowded dark corners, finding treasures, trying things on, carrying it all home. London charity shops were different, though, in volume and quality, overflowing with boxes and bags of cheap, unwashed clothes, still more piled up outside, picked over by passers-by, spilling out of their black rubbish bags and across pavements.

  Living here, I could see more clearly how the disposal of every throwaway thing people consumed in the course of their wasteful days was a growing problem. Even public bins seemed incrementally harder to come by, and where we lived in the financial district there were none at all – removed back when IRA bombs were a threat, Paul told me once, they never reappeared. Managing so much stuff was exhausting. If it were possible, I’d strip my life back to a single suitcase, as I had done when I’d first moved to London. A pile of identical clothes, food, a bed and nothing else. Like Obama with his blue and grey suits. Then motherhood might feel lighter, less cluttered with anxiety and pointless pressure.

  I dumped the clothes on the counter with relief. I knew they preferred to look over donations before they accepted them, because all the throwaway fashion choked their single bin. And then there were all the landfill sites out in Essex, filling up. What was going to happen when we ran out of space for landfill? Looking down at the new human I’d blithely created, who was right at the start of maybe ninety years here, with no idea of the planetary shitstorm he’d arrived into, I felt a new kind of guilt for him, to add to all the rest. Who would knowingly bring a kid into this?

  The woman at the counter had faded blonde hair and a carefully neutral expression as she went through the clothes: a tiny denim jacket, a green top of beaded sparkly netting, jeans. Some she kept, some she discarded with a tactful murmur of, ‘No, not for us.’

  She picked up a silky Chloe top, one I’d bought for fifty pounds in Selfridges with my savings when I’d first arrived in London, single and skinny and tanned from five weeks of sunbathing in San Sebastián. I’d kissed Evan from Marketing in it, I suddenly remembered, when I drank too much white wine on an empty stomach at someone’s leaving party. Embarrassed, I fought the urge to snatch it off her and hide it underneath my baby.

  The woman dropped it back on the counter with a tiny sniff. ‘A bit worn.’

  I inspected a broken nail, trying to keep my face expressionless.

  She smoothed over a pink silk dress – the outfit I’d worn to Paul’s sister’s wedding – with a thoughtful expression on her face. ‘These are clothes from another life, aren’t they?’

  ‘I suppose they are.’

  The woman looked at me, then the baby. He was asleep now.

  ‘It all comes back, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You get your life back to yourself again.’

  I couldn’t see it happening. Or perhaps it was more of an internal shift, more felt than seen. Maybe once sleep came back it would all be easier to work out, to move forward.

  ‘Personally I think motherhood’s a bit of a con,’ she continued. ‘I had two lots of kids, a couple in my twenties and a couple more in my forties’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. I look at mothers now and wonder how I did that.’

  ‘Four kids. That would have been so much work,’ I said. ‘I can barely manage one. But here you are, working. I think I’d be at home in bed after raising
four kids.’

  ‘Well, they’re grown up now so I’ve got time to give back a bit. But I remember telling my husband – the second one – that I was going to leave the lot of them. Take off. And he said, “You can’t take my kids.” And I looked at him and said, “I wasn’t planning to.”’ She met my eyes and I saw solidarity in them.

  I had a sudden urge to open up to this woman, to explain to her everything I’d done before kids – worked, studied, earned my own money, had conversations with friends, travelled. And how suddenly, all that had vanished. Before I’d had the baby, I’d thought the birth was the main event, and that after that everything would return to normal, except with a baby that sort of hung around and needed a new nappy every now and then, but mostly slept in a cot. What I hadn’t anticipated was the change in myself, how much more vulnerable I felt, and how much more dangerous the world seemed. At least in the hospital there had been a sense of urgency. People taking my blood pressure and weighing sheets to gauge blood loss and filling in forms and talking in soft, serious voices. That kind of behaviour seemed to match, precisely, my internal sense of panic and impending doom. Out here, though, it was lonely. It was like I’d arrived in a new country and wasn’t going home, with that exact same feeling of queasy disorientation. Surrounded by people, yet alone, because no-one spoke your language. Maybe all mothers felt the way I did, sometimes. Maybe motherhood – early motherhood, at least – was pretty thankless at times.

  ‘I bet you never take your free time for granted now, though?’ I said. ‘You know, lying in bed, having a nice cup of tea, no-one needing you to get up in the middle of the night and change their nappy.’

  She laughed. ‘Never. Never ever ever.’

  I looked down at the pile of clothes and saw a shirt in there that I used to love, black voile with a beautiful floral print on it. I pulled it out of the pile. ‘I think I’ll keep this one. I might wear it again.’

  ‘You will,’ said the woman, almost singing to me in encouragement. ‘Of course you will!’

  On the bus the baby howled, but the driver was taking corners hard and the road was shiny with rain, so I couldn’t risk picking him up. He locked eyes with me and screamed through the plastic rain cover.

  This is an emergency, his eyes seemed to be saying, and I wondered if I was scarring him psychologically by refusing to pick him up. But it wasn’t safe. We have to get home, I tried to communicate to him wordlessly through the plastic, but still he screamed, almost without pause, and soon I was crying too. Why had I thought it was a good idea to go out? I was so, so tired.

  An older woman, who reminded me of that gentle first midwife at the hospital, met my eyes and smiled, but I had to look away. That dreamy euphoria of late pregnancy and the marathon energy of birth had both seeped away and now there was nothing left to draw on, until I could sleep and let the well fill up again. A tumble into blank, dreamless slumber was all I wanted; it would take me two seconds and I’d be gone, my brain putting all the files of my unconscious back in order through long hours of loose-limbed, unbroken slumber.

  It was no wonder parents always looked so knackered. You were constantly on duty; you could never hit the pause button or take a few days off to get everything under control or just lie under a tree and look up. Being a mother meant remaining permanently present. Always vigilant, and somehow open to the public, too, for criticism and comment and the attention of strangers.

  I wanted my old life back. It had disintegrated without warning. I’d thought I’d still be living it, but with the addition of a cute little newborn. It was a nice life, I realised now. I had enjoyed it. Being able to go to the supermarket in peace, to leave the house with one small bag and meet up with Soraya for a movie or a drink, to think about what to cook for dinner, anonymous and undisturbed and completely in charge of my own time. Now I had a brand-new life, and although I’d thought I wanted it, I missed my old self. How did this baby even happen? I tried to think back, but found that I couldn’t.

  14

  By the time I got home, my fever was worse. Even making the soup felt too hard, so I just unpacked the shopping then took off my street clothes and went to bed with the baby. He slept neatly in the crook of my arm, his face as still and waxy as a doll’s, the curve of his nose and lips still round and unformed and foetal. Breathing in his breath, following him into sleep, we captured again that hushed stillness of pregnancy.

  Through the long afternoon, as the room darkened and the air got colder and my fever burned through me, we lay together. Giving in was a relief. Piles of tissues and throat lozenges were building up on the bedside table but they felt inadequate against the sickness I could feel boiling inside me, sealing my throat and filling my lungs and inching along my muscles.

  Night came, and I heard Paul wandering from room to room, looking for me, until he pushed open the bedroom door and saw us lying there in the light from the hallway.

  ‘Simone. Are you awake?’

  ‘Sort of. I don’t feel well … so hot.’

  ‘Sorry I’m so late. Work was a nightmare. What’s going on?’

  ‘I went out to get food and then when I came back I couldn’t get out of bed again. Can you bring me some water?’

  He returned with a thermometer and a glass of cold water, but it tasted metallic and horrible and my throat was too sore to swallow.

  ‘Thirty-nine degrees? You were sick last night too. Why did you have to go out today? You’ve probably made it worse.’

  ‘I don’t know. To get food. It feels like we haven’t eaten properly for days. No-one has been cooking.’

  Paul turned on the lamp. Our bedroom was stifling, the blinds down, the air stale, a balled-up nappy on the bedside table from when I had changed it a few hours ago without getting out from under the blankets. It was as if we’d reverted to survival mode. Finally, Paul seemed to register that I wasn’t coping. He gave me paracetamol and took the baby from me. I heard the bath running and him splashing and singing in the echoing bathroom. Then he came into our room, dressed the baby at the end of the bed, and disappeared again.

  Aching and shivery, I went out a little later, and found the baby in his bassinet on the dining room table, fascinated by the steel pendant light above his head. Paul was busy in the kitchen, chopping onions and carrots and celery and lowering chicken pieces into the pot, following a recipe on his phone, more food spilling from a Waitrose bag beside him on the bench. He had an air of competence about him, sleeves rolled up, moving easily from one task to the next, not shuffling or fading out or staring into space the way I had been for the last few days.

  It’s because he’s well rested, I realised, feeling like I was watching a wildlife documentary. What we’re observing here is the remarkable difference in basic functioning between someone who gets a full night’s sleep every night – because, of course, it’s no good everyone being sleep deprived – and someone who doesn’t. The clear difference between a person who simply gets into bed, falls asleep, and wakes up to daylight, and someone – a mother, usually, or a prisoner in a torturous regime – who experiences night-time as a series of unpredictable and desperate hours stacked up against each other, with no guarantee of reliable slumber. Falling into blackness, being tipped out of it, lying in a feverish half-wakeful state while the baby goes back to sleep, knowing that at any point she will be summoned again, and so on until dawn. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

  Eventually, Paul noticed my empty stare directed at him and smiled.

  ‘Oh you’re up! Come and sit on the couch, this will be ready soon.’

  He served me chicken noodle soup and orange juice, then cleared it all away and replaced it with the baby, who was gnawing the air, practically begging to be fed.

  Sleepily, I fed him, then settled him on my lap. For a moment, in the dim light of the living room, his mouth seemed to curve into a long, evil smile.

  ‘Paul?’

  He bustled in, a tea towel flung over his white work shirt, a harried look on his face.<
br />
  ‘Can you take the baby tonight?’ Looking down at him, the smile was still there, an exaggerated grin that came in and out of view in the dim room, or maybe it was my vision that was blurred.

  ‘But – what about when he wakes up?’

  ‘Bring him to me for a feed. I feel really sick … but if you take him for the night and I get some rest I should feel better … because we don’t really have anyone to look after him if I get worse. Now that Rachel’s gone. Hopefully some sleep will help.’

  ‘Okay.’ He looked nervous. ‘I’ll change the sheets on Rachel’s bed.’ He took the baby away again, then returned him dressed in his little blue sleeping bag with a red train embroidered across the chest.

  The baby was wide-awake now, gazing up at me as he balanced on my knees. It was as if he knew he was up past his bedtime, and seeing things he wouldn’t normally see, and so he was quiet and undemanding, happy to be here amid the action, such as it was. My arms were so weak and aching that even the light, puffy sleeping bag and the solid weight of his body beneath were hard to hold onto. When I coughed it was so loud it startled him, and it surprised me too – a thick, bubbling sound like my lungs were full of fluid. Once I’d started I couldn’t stop, and a new expression appeared on his face as he studied me – a clear, inquiring gaze, his brow wrinkled like a tiny scientist observing some unexpected, troubling development in an ongoing experiment. His eyes had a new wisdom in them, and then, as I continued to cough, his wrinkled brow conveyed deep worry. Staring at me, really staring, in a way I’d never seen him do before. Something about his expression was unsettling. Too adult. Babies have Stone Age brains, I remembered. They screamed all night, wanting to be held or to sleep on a parent’s chest, because to them there was no difference between being alone in a cot and complete abandonment in a forest full of prowling wolves. He didn’t know what the sound coming from my lungs was, but some primal instinct sensed danger, a threat to the only food source he knew. And as he communicated it to me, I began to worry. It wasn’t enough to keep him safe. I had to look after myself, too, because if I got sick, he was on his own. Another thing I had never considered.