by Anne Berry
‘There is absolutely nothing to go fretting yourself about, Catherine. I’m totally in control. It’s only a matter of bridging the gap, you know.’
And she thought, how wide, how wide is that gap, Sean? Because there comes a point when it’s not feasible any more to bridge a gap. Be honest, it’s not a gap, it’s a crevasse. And you’ve marooned us in it. But she’d said, ‘Are you sure?’
‘’Course I am, darlin’. I’d prefer it though, if you’d go to your parents. A couple of nights, so. That’s all.’ She said nothing. ‘Catherine? You will go, won’t you? Take Bria. Promise me?’
‘I promise,’ she echoed dully.
‘Good girl.’ And when he’d called her that, a good girl, she’d wanted to scream at him that she wasn’t a girl, she was a woman. And she needed a man beside her.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see an old friend, that’s all. I’ll be back before you know it.’ Then came a hiatus and just the sound of them both breathing, like divers drawing air through their mouthpieces.
‘Does she have a telephone number, your old friend?’
‘Catherine, what are you thinking of ? Don’t be silly. This is strictly business. Ring Owen if you need anything. At the flat or at the market, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And, Catherine?’
‘Yes?’
‘Kiss Bria for me. Tell her that her daddy loves her more than she will ever know.’
Catherine has read that the orchestra played music while the Titanic went down. She reflects that it was an insane thing to do. Surely they would have been more usefully employed bending their wits to surviving. But what if it was hopeless, truly hopeless and they each knew it, deep down, a fact chiselled in the gathering icebergs? They had a choice, they could all go to pieces, gibbering and squawking with panic, or they could carry on as normal, keep their dignity and show some courage. She will not go to her parents. Bria stirs in her sleep. Her closed eyelids have a lavender hue on them. There is a milk blister on her rosebud lips. Her cheeks are flushed. Her curls are spread against the cot mattress. It seems beyond credulity that such a wondrous child can have resulted from the debris of her life.
But as the light in the room strengthens, she has the strangest sensation that she is swimming up from the deep, rising to the surface where she will take a life-sustaining breath. Today is special, set apart from all the other days that have gone before, because today she is meeting a friend, Mara, at the recreation ground. She has only known her a week, and in that short space her outlook has altered from irredeemable to hopeful. No, she will not confide in her mother and have her rain reproaches down upon her. Rather, she will tell her new friend about Sean’s latest fiasco. She will talk freely, a concept so alien to her that it is like learning another language. And afterwards, as she has done every day this week, she will feel as light as chaff.
***
‘So Owen, when is Naomi coming back, eh?’ Enrico greets him as he enters the gloomy fug of the market.
‘Soon. The holiday did her the world of good.’
‘I knew she would love it there.’
‘Yeah, it was great. Really kind of you to arrange that. You’ve a good family.’ His eyes are still adjusting to the gloom and the Italian’s face is all shadow, excepting the jumping purple beads and the stringy orange beard.
‘Who is more handsome, me or my brother, Lorenzo?’ He gives a snort of laughter.
‘Impossible to choose between you.’ He has placed a hand on Owen’s shoulder, hampering his progress. ‘Him and your father, they’ve done a wonderful job restoring the cottage.’
‘But there is no money there and the tourist season is too short. He’ll leave eventually, the way I did. Hey, did you see Teodora?’ he laughs and catches hold of his St Christopher medallion. ‘The ghost of the lake?’
Owen’s jaw tightens as he visualizes the drunken intercourse with Naomi on the banks of the reservoir. It takes him a second to compose himself. He knows the expected retort should be some humorous quip, but he cannot deliver it. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he says feebly, rubbing a hand clammy with perspiration on the back pocket of his jeans. ‘No spooks turned up while we were there.’
He shrugs. ‘Well then, did you swim in the lake?’
‘I can’t swim.’ Enrico lifts an eyebrow.
‘But it was hot? Hotter than here, I bet?’
‘Yes, it was very hot.’ He sucks in his lower lip, then, ‘Naomi swam.’
‘Ah, of course she did.’
‘She should be back next week, then you can ask her all about it yourself. Look, I’d better go and open up.’
Enrico grins and stands aside. Then, as he passes, ‘So you’re the man now, eh, Owen? You’re the man.’
Later on, Owen stares down at his own reflection in the mirrored counter looking for the man, but only seeing the choppy blond hair and anxious eyes of a boy. His features are partially concealed by dozens of pairs of shimmering hair grips. He has the sudden urge to swipe them onto the floor, to stamp on them. Because of his own troubled dreams and Naomi’s worrying confession, he has had little sleep. Now, as he replays her words in the busy warren of the market, far from dispelling his alarm, they only seem to intensify it.
‘I wanted to see them for myself. Catherine and Sean’s baby, Bria.’
He feels he should be doing something – but what? All these secrets and no one to turn to, no one to share them with, to lessen his load of cares. The conditions in this hell hole are inhuman, he decides. It feels as if there is no circulation, no ventilation, as if they are all struggling to breathe the same tiny condensed mass of stuffy foul air. In the heat the odours of unwashed bodies, of sweat and incense, leather and rubber, seem as pungent as putrid meat. He wishes Sean was here. As soon as he gets back he will tell him what Naomi has been doing. Then he can deal with it. Last night’s revelations have filled him with ominous portents, and persuaded him irrefutably that she is far from well. As for her assurances that she will not continue in this ludicrous charade, he doubts their sincerity. Still, he comforts himself, there is no risk to mother and baby today. They are not in Hounslow. Sean said that they are staying with Catherine’s parents, beyond Naomi’s reach. Besides, it isn’t his problem, it is theirs. What is any of this to him? In a matter of days he will be gone. In a couple of months he probably won’t even be able to remember their names, Naomi, Sean . . . Catherine . . . Catherine and Bria.
The morning inches by, the confines of the market as claustrophobic as a dungeon. He waves away a customer. ‘I told you, we haven’t got any in that colour. The next aisle. They have them, love.’ He is starting to sound like Sean.
He leans heavily on the counter, arms braced, hands splayed for support, his head sagging. His homing-pigeon thoughts keep finding their way back to Catherine and Bria. Sensations claim him, the way Catherine’s tears damped his shirt, the snug fit of Bria in his arms. Covering his face with a hand, he blinks back tears. Then, he rolls his head and lets his eyes rove the concrete ceiling. Muzzy pokers of white light arrow off the fluorescent tubes. Right on cue Gary Glitter starts hollering that he is the leader of the gang. He needs to pull himself together. This is his overactive imagination. He is fabricating something sinister where there is only understandable inquisitiveness, and yes, perhaps resentment. But that is all. If Sean phones, he will tell him everything. If not, then, when he sees him on Sunday. There is certainly no need to panic about it.
‘Anyone serving?’ comes an American voice from behind him. More from habit than self-control, in the instant it takes for Clark Kent to become Superman, he is the convivial salesman, hurrying to hook down a handbag that the customer is pointing at. She is a large, loud woman with a tired, bleach-blonde perm, a slack-skinned face, and restless desirous eyes. ‘Oh, don’t you just love this bag, Ada?’ With a wave of her hand she conjures a thinner version of herself. He launches into his sales pitch, his spiel packed with effusive flattery, and vows of the b
est possible deal ever. In fact, it is a steal at the price he is going to give her. He has just tucked away the notes she gave him when he spots Blue striding towards him, his face distorted with wrath.
***
Mara is in control. She is fond of Naomi but she lacks the necessary purpose. She has tried cohabiting, a half-and-half arrangement. But experience has taught her that it doesn’t work. The problem is that Naomi lets The Blind Ones take advantage of her. She doesn’t stand up to them, doesn’t take them on. She wants the ruthless streak. Mara is the ruthless streak. In fact, Naomi owes her everything. If she didn’t step in from time to time and take the upper hand, Naomi would still be procrastinating, and nothing would ever be accomplished. Mara is on the train to Hounslow where she will meet their new friend, Catherine. Opposite her is a woman with a bawling baby. The woman looks at her bump and gives her a sisterly smile. Mara strokes it com placently. Her baby, when it comes, won’t cry. She will have a special baby, not like the squalling red-faced infant floundering just feet from her. The shrill lament feels as if it is trapped in her head, an angry wasp repeatedly stinging her thoughts, injecting its poison into her reason. What she does not understand is why no one else in the carriage seems to bother about it. Are they Blind Ones too, pretending, pretending, day and night, acting out their charades? Miss Elstob has deaf ears when it comes to baby’s yelling.
‘That baby’s sick with the fever, Miss,’ she tells her. ‘All burning up, you feel her brow. See if it’s not.’
‘Mind your own business, Mara, and don’t be cute with me,’ Miss says, cuffing her about the ears until the blood throbs inside them, and they feel thick and hot as drop scones fresh off the griddle.
But today she wakes with the conviction that something is about to happen, something out of the ordinary, something that will forever scatter the regimented days of her existence. It’s not as if there is a clue, though. In the bedroom are the same six beds all with blanketed humps inside them. She can see through the window that the sun is in its usual place in the sky. Baby is crying in the cot beside her, and she can hear Miss Elstob downstairs banging about in the kitchen. It is the school holidays, and the house is as crowded as ever. It is so jam packed that you can’t help tripping over children and bumping into them. She dreams of being alone, all alone, of having a place where you can hear your own thoughts without them being chopped up like firewood. In the coal cupboard she can hear them loud as a cannon some nights, her thoughts. But it’s not a good place, that cupboard. It’s filthy. And while the voice is cracking in her head, she is getting filthy too. The coal dust gets into her cuts and turns them blue. So when she comes out she is black and blue.
But it’s been a while since they chucked her in there. She’s been good. And if it wasn’t for baby howling away like a banshee, she might stay that way. Not long after breakfast the house gets empty. All the children ran out of it, and so does Miss Elstob. It is on account of something bad occurring that they rush out of doors. In house seven, one of the biggest boys, big as a man he is, a bully called Arthur Datcher, has lost his temper. A fight started between him and the house mother, Miss Lister. She is an evil cow too, with a goitre on her neck that makes it look as if she’s swallowed an egg that won’t go down. He shouted at her, and she shouted back and slapped him round the solid block of his face. The boy who brought the news said Arthur puffed himself up then, like a big old turkey, and his face went all purple. They were washing the breakfast things when he seized up a fork. He didn’t hold it like a fork, the boy said. He held it like a knife. And then he sort of turned round very slowly in the corner, where he was standing. His nostrils got big as cherries and he stared at Miss Lister, and stared and stared. He pawed the ground with his foot like a bull. He was pop-eyed and dribbling. But she just went on shouting until she was almost hoarse. Then suddenly he charged. He threw himself at her, directly at her, stabbing with the fork. She took a fall and well, the fork went into her cheek.
‘Gah! He speared it like it was a tomato,’ the boy said. ‘It’s dreadful bad, and Mother’s squawking and rolling all about.’ Then he told them that an ambulance was coming and the police, and that Arthur was being taken away, and that they should come and see. After he dashed off, all Mara could hear was the clomping of shoes on the wooden floor, and Miss Elstob’s boots too. And they all ran to take a peep for themselves.
Mara doesn’t know how long they’ll be, but for now the house is hollow as a shell. Her voice when she speaks has a bit of an echo. She hasn’t been in a cave but she’s been told caves have echoes too. Baby is upstairs in the cot and still crying. The cry has got thinner though, as if baby is losing its voice, like Miss Lister did. Mara looks all round and waves her hands in the space. There is so much of it to push about. She picks up Miss Elstob’s pinny and ties it on. It’s a bit too long for her, like an evening dress but the wrong material.
‘I’m going to make believe that this is my house, that I’m Mother. And that baby is my baby,’ she announces to no one. Then she goes upstairs and tells baby, ‘Because I’m Mother, my job is to make you stop crying.’
Baby looks up at her with slitty eyes crusted with dried ooze. Thick green snot cakes her nose so that she huffs and snorts to breathe. Her mouth is pushed wide open to make room for all the yells to come squalling out. And her face is apple red and fat as a grapefruit. Her brown hair is sticking down as if it has been glued on. ‘Poor baby,’ says Mara. ‘Mother’s here now to take care of you.’ She picks baby up, and she is all hot and wriggly, stinking of wee, with a sodden nappy heavy and dropping off. She carries baby downstairs to the bathroom, pulls off her nightshirt and nappy, and lays her on a towel on the floor. There are two baths in here, a small one for babies, and a large one for the big children. The baby bath is a white enamel tub resting on tall fluted metal legs. Because it’s high up you can stand when you bathe baby. There are two shiny silver taps at the end of it nearest the wall. And there is a soap dish made of white china screwed above them, with a big tablet of soap in it. Mara only runs the cold tap, puts it on full so that the water comes crashing out. It’s like a waterfall. She’s seen one of those on a walk. And it’s so fast that the bath is full up before she knows it.
‘Now Mother is going to take away all your hotness,’ she explains to baby. ‘This is like water medicine, and when I pull you out you will be all well again. And you’ll stop crying and go to sleep. Then I can go to sleep too.’
But baby just makes yammering noises and kicks thin legs and thrashes thin arms. So Mara scoops her up and holds her over the icy bath. It is quite difficult because baby is like an eel, bending this way and that, and trying to look sideways at what is under her. ‘One, two, three,’ Mara counts and she begins to lower baby. When baby’s bottom and back touch the icy water, she jumps like a frog. She is slippery with sweat, and Mara has to hold on tight to avoid dropping her. Now baby is struggling so much that she has to push her down, push her into the water, down, down to the bottom of the bath and hold her there. She is much stronger than Mara realized, so that she has to use all her brawn to keep her under. Even so, baby looks very pretty beneath the water with her brown hair waving like weed, and tiny silver air bubbles sticking to her face as if shiny beads have been stitched into her skin, and her eyes all wide with the crusts washing away.
That is the instant when the door bursts open and Miss Elstob is standing there. For a second she is made of stone. Then her thin body cracks like a whip. She grabs Mara by the hair and sends her spinning across the room. Then she plunges her scrawny arms in the water and yanks baby out, all dripping silver and wobbly, the loveliest quiet baby Mara has ever seen.
She lays baby on the towel and presses her tiny ribcage. And now Miss Elstob is sort of screaming in air, her forehead a tangle of wrinkles. Lots of faces pile up on top of each other in the doorway, because the children are all back. And just like the boy described Arthur, they are pop-eyed, all their mouths slack and fish-flapping. Curled up and holdi
ng her broken head together, Mara sees that baby is being sick, silver sick, water sick. And that the sick is not just being coughed out of her mouth, but out of her nose too, along with the watery snot. Then baby is whining in breaths, the sound like a bow scraped quickly over a violin. Mother wraps her up in the towel, and gives her to one of the older girls to hold.
‘Get a blanket for her, double quick. We’ll take her to the sick bay,’ she orders. When she turns on Mara, she is white with rage. And seeing this whiteness, Mara knows that it is much more awful than any red anger you can imagine. It is what comes after the red. It is so scalding that all the colour is burnt away.
‘What were you doing to the baby?’ she says in a radio-hiss voice.
‘I was making her cool, making her all cool,’ Mara whimpers. ‘’Cos baby was sick with the fever.’
Mother pulls out some of her hair dragging her to the coal cupboard, so that her scalp is bleeding when the door is slammed shut, dripping down her cheeks when the key is turned. She hugs her head and imagines that she is mending it, pasting chunks of her skull back together. Her hands are sticky with blood. She can hear the children calling her names through the door.
‘Baby killer.’ ‘Mad Mara.’ ‘Mara’s a murderer.’ ‘She’s gone and drowned the baby.’
She throws lumps of coal at them to show them that she doesn’t care, and they bang on the wood. Then she digs, and piece by piece begins burying herself under the coal mound. When she sucks her fingers she can taste coal dust and blood all mixed up. She wanted to be Mother, that’s all, to be Mother and for baby to be hers. Then Owen won’t go. He’ll stay to help her look after baby, and they’ll be a family, Mother, Father and baby. She loves Owen and he loves her back. He mustn’t ever leave her and go with someone else, the way Walt did. He mustn’t grow bored of her and want to throw her away. She thinks about her thighs locking him inside her, and her body wet and sleek with the lake. She thinks about the crying baby and how she gets confused sometimes, so that it seems the crying is coming from her, that she is the cry baby. She thinks about Mother, not the house mother but her real one, the one who left her behind and died.
