Читать книгу The Ice is Singing - Jane Rogers - Страница 9

A Natural Father

The school playground was fenced with green plastic-coated wire mesh, in diamond shapes, eight foot or so high. To prevent intruders, perhaps – or stop the children, like creatures in a zoo, from escaping. He stood right next to the wire, close enough so that each eye was looking through a separate diamond-shaped space. As he leant forward to stare, silently imploring the clusters of children by the wall, and round the boilerhouse, to break up and reveal themselves, his hands came up and gripped the wire either side of his staring face. She wasn’t there at first. His clenched hands were sweating. He stood rigid, willing her to appear.

Then from around a corner – or skipping out from the middle of a crowd right under his nose – would come the yellow-white fluff of hair, framing the terrible sweet face. There she was.

She never looked at him. She seemed to be happy, engaged with other children. Laughing, or being chased, or intent in intimate conversation. Once he had spotted her it was impossible to lose sight of her; she was the only child in the playground with hair so blonde it was nearly white – silver in some lights, a warm pale-yellow silver, like early morning sunshine, not the sad grey-silver of old age. Silver Top, Duck’s Fluff, Dandelion Clock, were names he had called her. Now she was bigger, with knobbly schoolgirl knees beneath her pleated skirt.

He hung immobile against the fence, hot and weak, till the bell was rung at one. The children ran to the doorway and he watched her light till the crowd of taller children pressing round her blotted it out.

Miss Haughton had been headmistress of Castle Hill Primary for eighteen years. She had seen most things, in her time. And she had seen men who hung in the shadows at the far end of the playground, following her children with eating eyes. This one was different because he came right up to the fence. In fact from the window of her office it looked as if he were lying, spreadeagled, against the fence. Like a man in a prison camp, she thought.

They should all be in prison. They should all be in prison, the filthy creatures, with their beastly appetites. Besides, he was damaging her fence. His whole weight was pressing against it. Soon it would begin to sag between its supports and have to be renewed. The children knew they mustn’t lean or climb on it. You’d think a grown man would have more sense.

The next time she spotted him she put down her roll of sugar paper, took the drawing pins from between her teeth, and marched straight out to send him packing.

‘If I see you loitering here again I shall call the police. Do you understand? These children are under my protection.’

The man turned pale when she spoke to him. The children had fallen in behind her and semi-circled her, iron filings round a magnet, as she faced him. A little girl with white-blonde hair stood there open-mouthed, staring at the strange man. He turned and fled.

His wife had been animated, like the child. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her. She was always engaged, laughing and chattering to other people. She seemed to have boundless energy. When they married he found it less attractive, because she was such a fly-by-night. She would start one project with all the enthusiasm in the world, and then lose interest. The house was full of half-finished things: half-made curtains, half-knitted jumpers, half-written letters. Being slow and thorough himself, he was finally irritated by her wilful skittishness. And, of course, vice versa. By the time he had painstakingly finished off the fitted cupboards in the kitchen, two months after she’d helped him choose the design, she could no longer stand the sight of the wretched things.

A couple of years passed. They both wanted children. They had planned to start a family as soon as they married, but nothing happened. Sometimes when things were going badly between them he thought it was just as well. At other times he thought a baby might help. She went to the doctor’s and a slow round of tests was started up. Odd hospital appointments here and there, and people telling them there was plenty of time yet. She seemed to make it more her concern than his; and when it would not be solved in a day or a single visit to the hospital, she lost patience. They rarely talked about it, though they made love often – it was the only activity in which they didn’t exasperate each other.

He began to long for a child. Not knowingly, but with a dull subconscious pang of loss. He wanted something he could watch and cherish and receive warmth from, like the slow steady glow of a fire; instead of the intricate, inanimate objects his life was devoted to at work, and at home in the car, the decorating, the fitting of wardrobes. He wanted someone who would grow in his warmth, to whom he could give the slow burning love which was locked away from his wife’s impatience. Loneliness was like an absence following him. There was no security between himself and Elizabeth.

Their lives were locked in a pattern of separateness. During the week they each worked; in the evenings he watched telly and she went to her evening classes. At weekends he tinkered with the car and worked on the house, while she shopped, visited friends, came and went untidily, leaving doors open, and half-finished cups of coffee, and dishes in the sink. Knowing that she was as unhappy as he was the only thing that made him able to bear her behaviour.

When she told him she was pregnant he was past believing it. It was too good to be true. They had been trying for three and a half years.

He was so happy he didn’t know how to express it, and hardly dared to for fear of it vanishing. He started work on the baby’s room, stripping, sanding, painting; slow and thorough. She was quieter and often seemed tired; being able to wait on her and bring her things eased his desire to love her. He thought she was never so beautiful as when she pregnant.

He went to the hospital with her when she started in labour, but towards the end they sent him out, because they needed to use forceps. The midwife said Elizabeth wasn’t pushing hard enough. He stood in the room where they put him in a blaze of fear, praying to the God he hadn’t believed in since junior school. If you let them be all right, I don’t care what happens. You can do anything you like to me afterwards, I won’t mind. Just let them both be all right, please God.

The baby (Amanda) was born with clean white hair, and a screwed-up kitten’s face. David cried when he saw her. And when he dared to cuddle her close enough to feel the living heat of her small, determined body, the cold space of loss that he had carried inside himself for years blazed up with an answering warmth.

Elizabeth was an erratic mother. She fed the child and looked after her well enough, but sometimes she wanted to do nothing but pet and fondle her – at others the baby must be banished to her cot for hours on end, to learn to sleep and get into a routine. Crisis followed crisis: over feeding (breast, followed after two weeks by bottle), colic, non-sleeping, nappy rash, dummies versus thumbs, and so on. Gradually David gained confidence, and began to infiltrate Elizabeth’s sloppinesses with his own methodical preparations. He cleaned the bottles, sterilized them and mixed up new feeds. With a patience he recognized as scheming – perhaps evil – he waited for Elizabeth to get tired of her new toy. Soon he had taken over the night-time feeds. He was at work all day, and became so tired he often hallucinated, but at night he was awake, ready with Amanda’s feeds, ready to change and cuddle and play with her. Alongside the growing intensity of his adoration for Amanda mushroomed a terrible fear for her. He began to imagine all sorts of things going wrong while he was out – Elizabeth leaving her dangerously near the edge of the bed, or Amanda choking in her sleep and Elizabeth not noticing. He was haunted by tales of cot deaths and infantile diseases.

Elizabeth, maddened by his fussing over the child, flared up and attacked him.

‘Look at yourself. You never sleep. You never even look up. You scuttle about from work to the baby to work again, with great bags under your eyes, like some sort of maniac. It’s impossible to hold a conversation with you. You’re insane.’

She insisted that he leave the baby to her for a few nights, and he did so, taking sleeping pills to prevent himself lying listening for the cries that Elizabeth might not hear. Amanda survived. She was smiling now, and waving her arms above the blankets when she woke.

There began to be a balance between David and Elizabeth, as he recognized that she wouldn’t actually let the child starve, and she accepted that it was useful if he fed the child in the evenings and at night. It meant she could go out.

When Amanda was nearly one, Elizabeth made an announcement which was as startling as the news of her pregnancy had been. David had put Amanda to bed and was having his tea. Elizabeth, who was going out, had already had hers.

‘I want a divorce. I’ve met someone else and he wants to marry me.’

She treated David’s astonished questioning with contempt.

‘Well, if you didn’t know you must be blind. It won’t make a damn of difference to you – Amanda’s the only thing in the world you care about anyway.’

‘Yes, I’ve known him a while. I’ve known him two years, if you must know – on and off.’

When she’d gone out David sat staring at the dirty table. He was glad she went out. He wanted to hit her. He wanted to hit her face and punch her belly and hurt her. That was the only thing he could think of. Hitting both of them with all his strength. The want seemed to swell and he raised his fist and brought it down with all his force on the table. Two plates fell off and shattered, and the milk fell over, spilling everywhere. His fist hurt.

He was not a man to analyse feelings. When the desire to hit her stopped being a physical need, he methodically tidied and swept the kitchen. Then he went and looked at Amanda sleeping. It was Amanda he cared about. He wouldn’t care about Elizabeth, he wouldn’t even interest himself in what the bitch did. She was finished, as far as he was concerned. It was Amanda he loved.

When Elizabeth returned later that night he was perfectly controlled. Speaking politely and distantly he began to discuss the settlement of their joint finances. He proposed that she move out immediately. Amanda would continue to live with him but he would deliver her to Elizabeth in the mornings when he went to work, and collect her on his way home. He would stay in the house and buy her half of the joint mortgage from her. Elizabeth, who had visibly been crying, flew into an uncontrolled rage, calling him a bastard and throwing her shoes at him.

‘I wish I’d never married you. I wish I’d never seen you!’ she screamed. ‘You don’t know what love is. You’ve never loved me, you’ve never cared about me. Only the cupboards and the car and the fucking wallpaper. You won’t love Mandy either, when she starts to be a person – she’ll see through you. You’re incapable of love!’

He didn’t see what she had to be so upset about, since she was getting her own way and leaving. He went to bed and when she followed him with her weeping and accusations he shifted to the spare room.

Elizabeth moved out. The quality of David’s life improved almost immediately. He was an organized man, and with no one else interfering in the house, he could make it run like a machine. He shopped during his lunch-hour, and devoted the evenings to Amanda. She was walking now, and learning to talk. Her company was a constant source of delight. When he called for her she would go into a frenzy of excitement, clapping her hands and shouting, ‘Da da da da!’ She giggled uproariously at him when he pulled faces; they had a game where he would chase her round the sofa on all fours, roaring, and soon he had only to pretend to crouch down, to send her into a paroxysm of laughter.

At weekends he took her out, planning outings to zoos and parks to delight her. When old ladies commented on how pretty and clever she was he glowed with pleasure. People were always remarking on her beautiful hair, which grew longer and more fly-away, without ever changing its silver-blonde colour. He called her Silver Top, Duck’s Fluff, Dandelion Clock.

As if he had been turned on a giant wheel, he entered again into a terrible state of anxiety about Elizabeth’s care of Amanda. Elizabeth might let her run out on to the road. She might fall downstairs. He could see her hurt, maimed, unconscious on a hospital bed; she was only safe when she was with him. And when the child fell asleep, exhausted, at 8.30 or 9 p.m., he resented all the waking daytime hours of her Elizabeth had enjoyed.

He considered leaving his job. If he gave up work . . . It would only be for three years anyway. Amanda could start school at four and a half. It wasn’t long – and he could sell the car, and do odd pieces of carpentry at home, at nights. He had savings. Maybe he could persuade Elizabeth to wait for her money from the mortgage, till Amanda was five. The new man was well off, to judge by the size of his house.

He realized that Amanda greeted Elizabeth with enthusiasm when he took her back in the mornings. She did like her mother. Would it harm her to lose contact? From the opulence of his imagined full days and nights with her, he considered letting her go to Elizabeth for the odd weekend.

He gave six weeks’ notice at work before he’d even spoken to Elizabeth. He didn’t want the confrontation. But he was also quite sure that he would get what he wanted. If Elizabeth refused, he would go to court and get proper custody. He was the injured party in the whole affair – and had clearly established more rights to Mandy through his continued care of her. There was no way he could lose.

He finally told Elizabeth one morning as he dropped Amanda off, that he’d like to talk to her that evening. At 6 p.m. she ushered him into an untidy, expensively furnished lounge. As she turned to open the door in front of him he realized, with a jolt, that she was pregnant again.

So much the better. She’d have no need to fight for Amanda now – she’d have a new baby all to herself. It hadn’t taken them long, had it. It hadn’t taken them three bloody years.

She sat down and asked him, quite formally, to sit. He tried not to look at her. He was just starting to speak when the door opened and a man’s blond head peered round and said, ‘Sorry!’ before withdrawing.

David started again. ‘I’ve come to see you about Amanda.’

She nodded distantly. He imagined the shape of her belly under her smock, and his hands remembered the feel of her skin, stretched tight and silky-smooth. It was impossible that he should be speaking to her like this – in another man’s house. He had to close his eyes to steady himself and tell himself with all his concentration, ‘She is a bitch and I don’t care about her. She is nothing to me.’ His hands, clenched on the arms of the chair, were sweating horribly. He wondered where Amanda was. It would be easier if he could see her.

‘I’m stopping work. Given in my notice. I want to – you to – I want you to let me have Amanda. I’ll look after her in the days too. You can see her – but I want her. It’s only fair. You can see that.’ Blurted out, not like any of the speeches he had planned. He was burning up. What was it? He didn’t even know what it was that was sending waves of hot panic beating through his flesh.

Elizabeth seemed composed. She spoke in a low voice. ‘Look, I’ve got something to tell you, David, and I should have told you before. I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t want to upset you. But there’s nothing else I can do, I’m afraid. I didn’t –’ She faltered, and he suddenly realized that far from being composed she too was terrified, on the edge of tears. Her voice dropped even lower and he had to crouch forward to hear her. ‘When I moved in with Mark he guessed something which I’d never thought of. He hadn’t really seen her before, you see. But when he saw Amanda – properly – he guessed.’ She came to a complete stop. David was paralysed. The ‘WHAT?’ of rage inside him could not come out, and lodged in his throat like a brick. At last she went on.

‘It’s the hair, you see. It’s so unusual. It would have been such a coincidence. And yours and mine both brown . . .’

Noise. Of roaring. Inside a furnace roaring up with a huge burning lion maw to swallow into red heat.

As it subsided she’d been talking on ‘ . . . because I didn’t, honestly, it never entered my head; he said, well, you can prove it. So he took her to the doctor’s and had a blood test.’

Roaring again, blocking her out. Red coming up before the eyes darkening to black. The white speaking senseless face blotted out, then hanging like a puppet gibbering before him. The mouth went on opening and closing, the face contorting, as he watched. She was crying. She was talking. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, David. I didn’t know, I promise you. You can – if you want you can see her – Mark won’t mind – if you want to see her sometimes.’

Without knowing how or where the strength came from he got out of the house, Elizabeth following him and crying at him all the time. At the door she caught his arm and he pushed her back, and stumbled down the steps. She shrank back into the hallway, staring at him. As he turned on to the pavement the corner of his eye was seared by a flash of white hair at the bedroom window.

He had never seen Amanda again. Except secretly, through fences. And the schoolteacher was right. Carry on like that and he’d turn into one of those perverts, be no better than them. Frightening a little girl at the school gate, with the ugly exposure of his crippling love.