by Kate Long
*
AND THEN EMMA was leaning into me, I could almost hear her breathing at my shoulder. So I reached under the papers and there was a New Testament with a black cover, very plain, but with a gap in the gold edged pages like a half-closed eye. I opened it up a fraction and caught a glimpse of a pink slip of paper, Certified copy of an entry . . . General Register Office . . . caution. My adoption certificate. They didn’t see anything, the pair on the bed; too busy mucking about with ribbons. Well, let them. It didn’t matter anyway. I closed the book and pushed it back in the bag. Next to me, Emma sighed again.
*
Mum came over all moony suddenly and said she wanted to be on her own for a while, so I took Daniel back to my bedroom. There was even less space than usual but he managed to wedge himself into the corner nearest the door; I didn’t tell him that at the bottom of the bin bag by his elbow was all the memorabilia from six months with Paul. I’d squirted hair mousse over the handful of cards, notes, photos and tickets before dumping them; now the room smelt like a cheap salon – The First Cut, perhaps. Daniel’s nose wrinkled but he didn’t say anything. I picked up a dog-eared magazine article entitled ‘Perfect 10: Nails to Die For’. ‘God, look at this! Imagine having time to paint your fingernails!’ I dropped it in the plastic sack. ‘A lot of this seems totally out of date now. From another era.’
‘I can see what you mean. Oh, this is no good; if I don’t move soon I’ll seize up.’ Daniel uncurled himself awkwardly and picked his way over the mess on the floor to install himself on the bed. He lay down and put his hands behind his head, very at home. ‘So, now the dust has settled, what are you going to do with your life?’
I shrugged. ‘There’s only so much dust can settle with a baby. Mum still wants me to go off to uni but it seems impossible at the moment. Mrs Carlisle thinks I should have a year out to retake the modules I missed; she has this idea that she can send me assignments through the post and I could just come in for a few lessons a week. Apparently the Head’s OK with that.’
‘And you?’
‘I really want those As. I worked hard enough for them. But it’s going to be a bloody funny year.’ He caught my rueful gaze and held out his hand. I stepped over and sat next to him.
‘Come here.’ He pulled me down, wrapped me in his long arms and kissed my hair. ‘Listen. I won’t go, I’ve decided. I’m not leaving you, Charlotte.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I mumbled into his chest. ‘You had your heart set on Oxford.’
He snorted. ‘Some chance. With an offer of three As it’s not very likely. Dad can pull all the strings he wants, it’s not going to get me in unless my papers get mixed up with some other poor sod’s. Anyway, that’s not important any more. You and Will are what matter.’
I moved away and touched his face. ‘It is, Daniel. If you don’t get into Oxford, somewhere else’ll take you, you’re too bloody clever. I bet Durham or Manchester accept you. You’ve got to go and get that degree. I’d go if it was the other way round.’
‘Would you?’ He looked surprised.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Faintly from downstairs we heard Will begin to cry. I tensed to go to him, but then he stopped; Mum must have nipped down and picked him up. I let my muscles relax again, but my mind was racing. ‘It’s all too difficult. My brain’s not what it used to be.’
‘How about I defer my place and take a year out? I might be able to swing some sort of job at the engineering works; could your dad put in a good word for me?’
I laughed. ‘My dad? That really would blight your chances. No, don’t. We’d still have to part at the end of the year, unless I got in at the same uni and there’s no guarantee of that.’ Daniel looked mournful. ‘Come on, it’s only what happens to thousands of couples every year. And in the end they either make it or they don’t—’
‘We will.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to leave you.’
This was getting out of hand, I felt.
‘Daniel!’ I shook him by the shoulders, pushed him against the mattress and climbed astride him. His eyes were wide and miserable. I blew in his face but he only turned away. ‘Right, you!’ I growled, putting my mouth close to his ear, ‘Stop being such a silly bugger. It’s not till next September, anyway! You might meet some fancy piece and run off with her long before then. Snap out of it! Lighten up! Because if you don’t I’m going to have to take your trousers down and interfere with you.’
There was a pause.
‘Did I tell you how depressed I’ve been?’ he said.
Afterwards we lay quietly and I combed his hair with my fingers.
‘You really should get this chopped, you know.’
‘Do you think? I’ve always thought of it as my finest feature.’
‘Get off.’ I ruffled his mop. ‘You look like Young Einstein.’
He gripped my wrist and kissed it. ‘I know you think I was being over the top before, but this is the first time in my life, well certainly the first time since I left Guildford, that I feel like I belong with someone. Does that sound mad?’
‘No, ’cause I think I feel like that too. It’s . . . trying to find out where you fit in. I’ve never felt very good at that. Mind you, this household hasn’t been exactly conducive to forming settled relationships. It’s been such a battleground, and with the three of us it was always two against one, different combinations. You won’t have had that with there being four of you.’
‘No, but I know what you mean about the rows.’ We shuffled into spoons and he put his arm across me and talked into the back of my neck. ‘About a year before we left Surrey there were shouting matches every night, and actually there were just the three of us then because my sister had left home. Then, after the rows came the freezing silences and the “Tell your mother that I won’t be in for dinner” and “Tell your father that he’ll have to cook his own, then” routine, with me in the middle. I never want to go through that again. If they ever start up I shall leave, I’m old enough now.’
‘Move in here. See how the other half live.’ I reached back and dug him in the ribs.
He sighed. ‘All us damaged adolescents, all over the country, trying to create our own families. I hope to God we succeed.’
*
THE FEELING hit quite suddenly; perhaps post-natal depression’s catching. I’d spent a long time going through Nan’s bag, although I didn’t look at the certificate again. There were four suspender ends, and seven Robinson’s Golly vouchers bulldog-clipped together, and an empty cotton reel with nails hammered in for French knitting (Nan had drawn a smiley face in biro on the side); an award for long service at the paper mill with my dad’s name on it; there was a Temperance Society newsletter dated 1899, God knows whose that was; there was my first baby tooth folded in greaseproof paper in a BunnyBons tin; and a scraggy binker mat I’d made in the juniors, all lumpy knots underneath.
I thought of Nan as a young woman, a girl, then as she was now. The present didn’t wipe out the past, she had been those other, young, people.
Then Will began to cry again so I gathered it all together and took the bag downstairs with me. And as I hoisted him up and held his squirmy bulk to my chest, it seemed to me that time split clearly down the middle and I realized what I’d so nearly done.
Once, when I was about seven, I’d found a sparrow’s nest in one of the bust-up garages on the edge of the estate. There were three blue eggs, perfect as a painting, against some white fluff and grey-brown feathers. The mother bird was going frantic, chip-chipping at me from the rafters above, so at first I just looked, but finally the urge to cradle the smooth warm shells against my palm became too much and I picked them up. They felt precious and thrilling. I carried them carefully back home and took them straight to Dad. I assumed he’d be as excited as I was.
His face went angry, then sad when he saw what I had. Deep lines came from his nose to the corners of his mouth; it was much, much worse than if he’d shouted at me. He
marched me back in silence to the nest and made me roll them gently back in, then we stood for a while waiting to see if the mother bird would come. ‘You see,’ he’d whispered, ‘she might be able to smell you on ‘em, then she’d be too frittened to come near.’
‘Does that mean the babies’ll die?’ It had only just dawned on me that that’s what the eggs were; I mean, you buy eggs in the supermarket like a packet of biscuits, don’t you? Then when you eat them it’s yellow and white goo inside, not tiny birds. I felt terrible. Dad nodded almost imperceptibly and I burst into tears. We waited a good thirty minutes but no mummy bird appeared.
‘Don’t give up hope,’ he said comfortingly, as he took my hand to lead me home, but I wasn’t daft. I knew eggs had to be kept warm. I knew what I’d done.
‘Thing is,’ he explained as we got past the church, ‘if you take even one egg you’re not killing one bird, you’re killing millions.’
‘How come?’ I’d been wiping my nose on my cardigan sleeve all the way but he didn’t tell me off for it.
‘Because that bird would have had babies, and those babies babies of their own, and so on and so on, down the generations. Ad in-fin-i-tum.’
It wasn’t like him to heap coals of fire on my head, so I knew he thought it was serious. All the rest of that summer I trailed back and forth to the garage in the hope that I could deliver some good news and wipe the slate clean, but each visit the eggs were still there, proof of my guilt. At the beginning of autumn the whole nest disappeared, I don’t know whether it was lads or gales or a fox maybe; do they eat rotten eggs? I stopped going, anyway.
To make it up, Dad bought me a pair of binoculars for my birthday the next year and took me up the Pike to see if we could spot the albino jackdaw (we did!), only the effort of climbing winded him and it took us a long, long time to stagger back down again. I think maybe that was the very beginning of him getting ill. I can still remember Nan’s face as he finally tottered in through the front door. So all things considered, I never really got into bird-watching.
But baby Will lying so trusting in my arms, delicate flaring nostrils, little screwed-up yawn; I so nearly destroyed you. I was so nearly such a bad mother. I can’t believe what I almost did with your life and your mother’s. Every time I look at you, I’ll feel the weight of what might have happened; all that future wiped out. Your first tooth, your first step, your first word, your first day at school. And so I should. I’ll make it up to you, Will; I’ll be such a good grandma, I really shall, really.
*
Strange thing: I heard Mum crying in the night when I got up to do Will’s feed. She was sobbing and it sounded like she was talking to herself too. Anyway, I didn’t go in. I was knackered, and I wouldn’t have known what else to say. She’ll just have to work the Nan thing through.
*
I’VE KEPT thinking of summat the vicar said at Bill’s funeral: the Door is Always Open. It is Never Closed. I wish I’d asked him what he meant but he’s dead now, Mr Speakman.
What did he mean?
*
IT TURNED OUT to be a weird Christmas, all right, even though it started off fairly normal. It was the first Christmas with Emma, for a start. Throughout the morning she hung at my elbow, round-eyed. ‘You’re never going away, are you?’ I asked her silently, and she shook her head.
Nan came home for Christmas dinner, thank God, or I’d have spent the day under a cloud of guilt. I cut the food up for her while the plate was still in the kitchen; Matron had tipped me off about that. Then I chopped Charlotte’s up too, so she could eat with grizzly Will on her knee. So we got through that all right, although pulling the crackers proved to be a bit of a challenge and the snaps made Will bawl. He worked himself into such a foul temper Charlotte finally took him upstairs where he went to sleep at once. Then Steve arrived with his Brilliant Present.
‘I’m not stoppin’, my sister’s expectin’ me. I wanted to drop these off, though.’
There were some CD-Roms for Charlotte, a bottle of dodgy perfume for Nan, a ridiculously large teddy for William and a spiral-bound notebook for me.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, turning it over and finding only a W. H. Smiths price label on the back. True, it had a nice picture of Lake Windermere on the front but I didn’t see that was anything to get excited about.
‘Take a look inside. There’s twenty of ’em. Took me ages.’
I flipped a few pages over.
1 voucher for
1 hours babysitting
signed
Steve
‘Good, in’t it? A chap at work saw it on Oprah Winfrey an’ he said it had gone down a treat.’ He stood back and waited for the applause.
‘Thanks. Really, that’s a great present. I appreciate it.’
Steve beamed. ‘I thought so. Only don’t make it a Saturday afternoon ’cause of the footie. An’ I’m out Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Fridays can be tricky, too. But apart from that . . . I’m all yours! Hey by the way, how much did you pay for that tree? ’Cause I know a chap at work selling ’em for a pound a foot. He gets ’em off motorway reservations, digs ’em up at night, ’s not like it’s stealing or anything. I’ll sort you one out next year.’
When he’d gone Charlotte wanted to know what the deal was.
‘It’s just a way of getting back in with me, I know what he’s up to. But don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, eh? I don’t suppose he knows what he’s letting himself in for.’ We looked at each other and sniggered. ‘I’d like to be a fly on the wall when he has to change one of William’s demon nappies.’
‘Or when Will pukes all down Dad’s back.’
‘Quite.’
‘This scent smells of toilet cleaner,’ said Nan. ‘Put it under t’ sink wi’ t’ Vim.’
Daniel arrived shortly afterwards like some kind of rogue Santa, bringing with him an entirely new future.
I could tell he was on pins from the word go.
‘I got all these for Will,’ he said breathlessly, unpacking a stack of garish toys from the Early Learning Centre. ‘Dad says a baby’s brain carries on developing for months after birth, so he needs plenty to stimulate him.’ He pressed a plastic cow in the stomach and it mooed. ‘That’ll get those neurons sparking.’
‘Have you been running?’ I asked.
He only gave a nervous giggle and handed me a huge poinsettia. ‘For your table,’ he explained. ‘Although I have to say it looks extremely nice already.’
We all turned to the scene of devastation that was the remains of the turkey dinner. A trail of gravy bisected the white cloth, and Nan had wiped her hands on her paper hat and screwed it up in the sauce boat. Dead jokes lay curled next to a set of jacks, a metal puzzle and a fish key-ring.
‘Yeah, right,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did have a centrepiece but I set it alight and melted the robin.’
‘Jolly good. Now, take these; I haven’t finished yet,’ said Daniel producing more parcels with the flourish of a conjurer. I began to wonder if he was drunk.
There was talc for Nan and a snakeskin belt for Charlotte to match some boots she had. She was made up.
‘Are you taking your coat off or what?’ I laughed.
‘Yeah, sit down, for God’s sake, Fidget Britches,’ said Charlotte. ‘And while you’re here you can settle a debate.’ She pointed at the silver tinsel tree with folding arms we bring out every year. ‘Is that or is that not a Middle-Class Christmas tree?’
‘Be quiet,’ I said without much hope. ‘I’ve got to go and strip the turkey.’
‘Hang on a minute. What do you say, Dan?’
He shuffled himself backwards into the settee and shrugged. ‘I’m not entirely sure what you mean.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Clever, ‘Mum thinks we should start having a real tree because it’s posher, even though it’s loads more hassle.’
‘I like them,’ I said. ‘I like the smell, it’s atmospheric. We’d have had one this year but what with one thing and another I
never got round to it.’
‘Only,’ she went on, ‘I told her that in real Middle-Class homes they care about the environment too much to cut down trees on a whim, so it’s actually cooler to have an artificial one.’
‘I think they’re both rather fun,’ he said, ‘if you have to have a pagan anachronism in your front room.’
‘Well, what sort of tree do your parents have, Daniel?’ I asked, rising to tackle the mess on the table.
‘Norway spruce. But my father has a synthetic one at the surgery, I don’t know if that counts.’
‘See,’ said Charlotte, but actually I thought I’d won that one.
*
‘What was all that about trees?’ asked Daniel when Mum was in the kitchen sawing the last bits off the turkey.
‘You’re a bonny lad,’ said Nan attempting to lean over and pat his knee. ‘I’m nearly ninety, you know.’
‘Splendid.’
‘They think as ’cause you’re owd you’re not so gradely reet.’ Nan sat back with a satisfied look on her face.
‘Do they? Do they really?’ He turned to me.
‘Oh, yeah, well, I was winding her up. She’s such a daft bat at times. Listen.’
‘While shepherds washed their socks by night
All watching ITV
The angel of the Lord came down
And switched to BBC,’
sang Mum over the noise of the radio, then, ‘Bugger bugger bugger!’ Evidently the turkey was putting up a fight this year.
‘Have a toffee,’ said Nan brightly. But I knew she couldn’t open her handbag so I got down on the rug, fished some out for her and began unwrapping the cellophane.
‘It’s Mum’s fixation about being Middle Class. It’s stupid, I keep telling her we’re probably all Middle Class these days.’
