Читать книгу Baby Love - Louisa Young - Страница 8

I had had one hell of an evening one way or another. I didn’t want to see the guy in the first place, but when you’ve known someone twelve years it’s never quite the right time to tell them to go away, specially when you owe them, and I owed him. Well, let that be a lesson to me.

Neil likes me more than I like him. Neil used to ring up and say, ‘When can I see you? Tonight tomorrow Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday or any day next week? Or the week after?’ I liked Neil too – still do – he’s funny and kind, a clever lawyer, probably too good for me anyway. But I’m not the kind of woman who gets a kick out of a good man trailing his unrequited love around in front of her like Raleigh’s muddy cloak. So I tell him, and then he starts saying, ‘No, look, it’s fine, really, it’s not the same as it was, look, I can accept it. Really.’

And I say OK, because I’m not so vain as to believe a man’s in love with me when he’s saying he’s not any more. And then two weeks later something comes up and there is occasion to say, ‘But you said you weren’t in love with me any more!’ and he turns and says, ‘Don’t ever believe me if I say that.’

So that was Wednesday evening. My friend Brigid, who is a star, and the sort of woman I’d really like to be if things – including me – were different, came round to babysit and I thought Neil and I might go to the pictures. That way we could avoid being pissed off at each other over a dinner table all evening. He wasn’t having it. He’d booked a table. He was going to insist on paying, too, and he was going to get his money’s worth of making me feel bad because he felt bad because I didn’t like him as much as he liked me.

So we ended up in one of those unpleasantly modern Italian restaurants in Soho, in which plate glass and cackling pretentious drunkards have replaced all the perfectly nice straw-wrapped Chianti bottles and Sicilian donkeys hanging from the ceilings which used to be there in the old days. I picked at my over-cooked tagliatelle and drank too much over-priced Soave, and he bitched at me.

Neil doesn’t drink. I do. We’d fallen into this habit over the years where after a night out he’d drive me home in my car – or on my bike in the old days – and then get a minicab from round the corner. He never asked to come in except sometimes in the old days when we were young and skint, when he’d sleep on the sofa and I’d resent his presence the next morning. He never tried to kiss me. It was a great relationship.

Anyway that night I lost my temper with him. We were at a red light on Shaftesbury Avenue and he said, ‘So are you free next week?’ It’s a ridiculous question. He knows I stay home with my kid anyway, but what gets me is that if I did spend all my time in nightclubs dancing the lambada with a camellia behind each ear and a handsome Argentinian in my arms it would be none of his damn business. And I said, ‘Neil, don’t interrogate me.’

He looked at me, and then he did something that he loves to do – he walked out. This is normally nothing more than irritating (or a relief) but at a red light just by Piccadilly Circus on a Friday night at closing time it was actively inconvenient. He stepped out of the car, slammed the door and walked off into the crowd.

‘For fuck sake!’ I yelled, and the lights changed, and the cars behind started honking. So I slid into the driver’s seat and took off.

I turned into the first side street I could. Rupert Street. Unfortunately it was one way. The other way. The policeman hanging around on the corner couldn’t believe his luck. I couldn’t believe mine either.

*

Getting done for drunken driving and driving the wrong way up a one-way street is not necessarily the end of the world but it was near as dammit for me.

After all the ritual humiliation – it really is a drag not being in the right – they let me out of the station at about three in the morning, but they wouldn’t give me my car keys. I made them unlock the car for me to take out a bottle of vodka I had on the back seat. It just confirmed their suspicions. I found a taxi – I think the driver knew what time they let the drunk drivers out and made it a regular pick-up point – and got home. They hadn’t let me ring home either so Brigid was lying in half-hysterical half-sleep on the sofa when I let myself in. I looked in on Lily. She was deep in the sleep of the ignorant, golden-pink and fragrant. I could hear her tiny breathing.

Brigid’s a lovely woman but she can shriek when she has a mind to.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she shrieked. Well, it was a fair question. I’d told her not a minute after midnight. Brigid is the nearest thing I’ve had in a long time to parents wanting me home on time. She has pale red hair and four children and every human quality except beauty. How does a woman with four children come to be babysitting? By a precious combination of every human quality and a gaggle of sisters, all in the neighbourhood, who fight among themselves for the privilege of babysitting their nephews and nieces, thus liberating Brigid to sit for me. It’s an unspoken thing among them. Brigid needs money, I need time, women need to help each other. It works. Brigid’s been babysitting for me and worrying about me ever since I got Lily, and I like her. Actually she’s a friend. And so are Maireadh and Siobhan and Eileen and Aisling.

‘Don’t shriek,’ I said. ‘Just don’t shriek or I’ll cry.’

‘Don’t cry!’ she shrieked. I looked at her and she must have understood my look because she went to the fridge.

‘I’ve got it here,’ I said, opening the bottle of vodka.

‘I was looking for the milk,’ she said. ‘I was going to make you a cup of tea.’ She got me a glass and an ice-cube anyway. ‘What happened?’ she said.

‘I’ve been in gaol,’ I said. She knew that was a joke so she laughed. Even as I let her laugh the repercussions were running through my brain. My threat to cry may prove not idle yet, I thought. But I don’t cry. And I didn’t need to cry, I needed to think.

Brigid was still saying, ‘So what happened?’ I told her, briefly. I didn’t think she’d pick up the ramifications and she didn’t. I told her to go home. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Maireadh’s there with the boys. She’s been arguing with Reuben so she’s staying.’

‘Where’s Eileen then?’

‘Still there. Maireadh’s on the settee … I’ll sit with you a while.’

It was an honourable thought, so I let her for five minutes or so, then I made her go.

I poured the vodka and stared out the window at the stripy petunias in the hanging basket across the way, glowing in the midsummer midnight half dark. Only about half the bulbs in the streetlamps on my estate are ever working at one time, but in summer along the dim dirty red-brick walkways there is always the gleam of petunias in a hanging basket.

*

My baby isn’t mine. It sounds strange to say it, because she is so much mine it hurts, but technically she’s not mine. My sister Janie was killed three years ago in the same crash that screwed up my leg. She was on the back of my bike. I was riding it. I was not responsible. Like hell. Technically, I was not responsible.

Lily was born just as Janie died, snatched from her belly and the jaws of death. It must be weird doing a Caesarean on a dying woman. I wasn’t there. But as soon as I was conscious I knew.

The baby was in intensive care. Janie was in the morgue. My mother was in despair. My father was incandescent with rage. I was in traction. And where was Jim, Janie’s about to be ex-boyfriend, or so she swore though she never got round to telling him, or he never got round to listening. We didn’t know where Jim was.

‘You mustn’t worry about it,’ my mother repeated like a mantra over the hospital soup. ‘You just take time to get better. You mustn’t worry. You mustn’t worry.’

She was talking to herself, of course, telling herself not to worry. Just chanting, quietly, for comfort. She was in shock, I suppose. Dad just strode the green-tiled corridors, up to the baby unit, down to me, up to the baby unit, down to me. He was like one of those depressed animals in the zoo, repeating and repeating his movements, up and down, up and down, to and fro, to and fro, in the cage of his disbelief. I was no different: my thoughts spun to and fro like her words and his feet. ‘Where’s Jim, how can we keep the baby from him, when can I walk, when can I walk, where’s Jim, I’ve got to get the baby, when is Jim going to walk in here, when can I walk, where’s the baby?’ You never know how grief will get you, until it does. All I wanted was to do things, as if doing things might change the big thing. But I couldn’t do anything. Not even the normal things you do whether or not there is grief. Couldn’t go out, or be at home, or cook, or move … I filled my time by demanding to see doctors, as if the more I saw of them the quicker I could be better. All that happened was they began to hate me.

There was a nice nurse, Dolores. She was on nights, and didn’t make me take my pain-killers. ‘I have to think,’ I said. ‘Don’t make me drugged.’

She went along with me for a while and then said: ‘You’re only thinking the same things over and over, why bother? If you’re not going to do anything, you should just get some proper rest.’

‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’ I asked her.

‘You’re talking in your sleep,’ she said.

I told her about it. How Janie was only on the back of my motorcycle eight and a half months pregnant because Jim had made one of his fairly regular phone calls that he didn’t give a fuck about any fucking injunction she said she’d take out and he was coming over now. How he’d done it before. How Janie preferred a dashing escape courtesy of her sister. How I didn’t know for certain that what she escaped from would have been as bad as what she got.

What if Jim comes for Lily?

‘What if he comes!’ I was shouting, shouting and fighting through flame, floating, clutching a child, someone was holding my ankles and my leg came off in their hand, and I floated on up and up without it …

I woke to find myself in Dolores’ arms, my head on her shoulder. The nightlights glowed, the plumbing rumbled. Hospital smell, hospital heat. Dolores’ big brown eyes in the dimness. Why am I so comforted by the idea of an African night? She gave me a glass of water and wrapped a blanket round my shoulders.

‘I looked upstairs before I came in,’ she said. ‘The little one’s OK. She’s weak but she’s OK. No one going to take her anywhere, that’s for sure.’

‘He’s her father,’ I mumbled.

‘She registered yet?’

‘No.’

‘Nobody knows who’s her father then. We don’t know him. Her mother dead.’

‘He’s a pig.’

‘You can’t do anything yet,’ she said.

‘He could turn up any time.’

‘Child’s on a tube. She’s not travelling.’

‘I must have her. I must, you know.’ I knew. There was never any question. Little Janie, my little sister, all of ten months younger than me.

‘Think about that then,’ said Dolores.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you keep her? Can you feed her? You a sensible woman? What your husband say?’

‘No husband.’

‘That’s hard.’ I looked up at her. She knew how hard it was.

‘How many do you have?’ I asked.

‘Three,’ she said. ‘Kwame, Kofi and Nana. My mother helps.’

I can keep a child. I can work. (Jesus. I’m a dancer. My leg is in traction. I’ll have to be something else, then. Can I work? Yes. There is no question.)

‘But he’ll be able to take her.’

‘Fight for her.’

Fight. How? In court? Adoption? How does that work? He’d have to agree. Would he agree? Would he have to agree?

‘I tell you two things,’ murmured Dolores. ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law. And nothing succeed like a fait accompli.’

‘When can I walk?’

‘Consultant coming round in the morning.’

He won’t tell me anything. They never say anything in case you sue them when it takes longer, or doesn’t work out the way they said it might. Got to walk, got to walk.

I slept again, and dreamt of faits accomplis.

*

The next morning I had the day nurse wheel the ward pay-phone over to me and called Neil.

‘Janie’s dead and I want to keep her child.’

Neil was silent for a moment.

‘Janie’s dead.’

‘Yes.’

He started crying. I sat there. Fed in another 10p. I didn’t cry. He continued.

‘I’m so, so …’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘How?’ he said.

‘Crash.’

‘But the baby …?’

‘Fine. Early, but fine.’

‘And Jim?’

‘Neil, we haven’t seen him. I don’t know if he knows. But Neil – you mustn’t tell him. They had a row … Look, come and see me. Please.’

‘Yes, yes … of course.’

‘I’m in hospital.’

‘Oh, God – are you all right?’

I burst out laughing. Then crying. ‘Come this afternoon. This morning. Come now.’

When he came he said the only thing to do was to get the baby out of hospital as soon as it was safe to do so, take her home, and hold tight. Apply for parental responsibility. If Jim showed an interest, fight it out. ‘Get her home and love her and be a good parent,’ he said. ‘Any judge will respect that. And get married.’

*

You see why I find it hard to be mean to Neil. The petunias gleamed at me like clear thoughts in a mist of confusion. It’s been three years and for those three years Jim has not turned up. I kept track of him. He is well off and well respected, and his nature remains better known to me than to the police or to anyone with any influence over the situation. It’s up to me to make sure he never sees Lily again.

Therefore I don’t need anything on my record. Anything at all. I could make a living without the car, that’s not the problem. The licence itself hardly matters. What matters is the good name. I need my good name to keep her.

I’d been balancing it up. Seventeen unreported black eyes that he gave her (I kept count) and one injunction that she never brought versus several thousand quids’ – worth of lawyers saying that I’m a drunkard, irresponsible, incapable, single and not the child’s parent. That’s what I was thinking about. That and the fact that that morning, the morning of the night I was out with Neil, Jim had rung up and left a message saying he wanted to talk to me.

*

I slept a little because you have to. At around seven I came out of a bleak doze to find that my mind was made up. An hour later I got on the telephone to a certain police station. I didn’t think Ben Cooper would be there but it was possible and I felt I should move as quickly as I could. I was in luck, I suppose. He was there.

Ben Cooper. We first met when we were both instructors on a motorbike road safety course – he as a young cop, me in one of many attempts to prove myself normal, fit, helpful, a credit to the community and in steady employment. Ben Cooper the Bent Copper.

‘Hello, stranger,’ he said when he came on the line. He always said that. It was his little joke. In fact we saw each other occasionally. Not by design, but just because he made a point of never letting anyone go, just in case. I’d been trying to let go of him because I don’t like the guy, and in fact I don’t think I’d seen him to talk to since Janie died.

I didn’t want to ask him, but I honestly thought it was the right thing to do. Perhaps my thinking was screwed. Perhaps the cold light of dawn that you see things clearly by is meant to come with sobriety after a good night’s sleep, not still half-drunk after a night of fretting. Whatever.

‘Ben,’ I said. ‘Can we meet?’

‘Mmm,’ he said.

‘Slight problem,’ I said.

‘Want to cry on my shoulder?’ he said.

‘Mmm,’ I said.

‘Professional shoulder?’ he said.

‘Mmm,’ I said.

‘Anything you want to tell me now?’ he said.

‘Can I?’ I said.

‘I’ll call you right back,’ he said.

Two minutes later he had the gist. He took the arresting officer’s number and my registration number and the case number and a load of other numbers and I took the number 500, which was how many quid his professional advice cost these days. Cheap at the price if he could do it.

‘Oh, I can do it,’ he said. ‘You get some sleep. You sound terrible.’ I didn’t tell him Lily was due at nursery in an hour and a half.