Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell

by Debbie Carbin

  ‘Hospital?’ she says. How does she do that?

  ‘Ye-es. And I’ve got someone here who wants to meet you.’

  There’s a pause. Then, ‘Oh my God! I’m a granny! Oh my God! Where are you? Which hospital? Which ward? I’m on my way!’

  I haven’t even told her she has a granddaughter.

  My next visitor arrives. Thankfully it is just moments after the nurse takes out my catheter and removes the wee bucket from under the bed. Urine travelling through a clear plastic tube across the blankets over your legs is not the most fetching accessory I’ve worn. I’ve got my back to the archway that serves as entrance to the ward so I don’t notice anyone there until I’ve picked Plum up and am turning to sit back down with her in my arms. The tall figure standing at the end of my bed staring at us makes me jump again. I am so much less poised than I used to be, now that I’ve got more to worry about than what my hair is like.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘How are you, Rachel?’ Actually, he’s staring at Plum, not at me. ‘What did you have?’ He dumps an enormous purple dinosaur on the end of the bed and I eye it uneasily. It’s three times the size of Plum and if it fell on her would probably suffocate her.

  ‘A little girl. A daughter.’

  ‘A daughter,’ he whispers, perhaps more to himself than to me or Plum. ‘A daughter.’ Is it my imagination or is he a bit taller since last summer?

  ‘Why are you here, Nick?’

  He looks up at me. He’s holding a bunch of daffodils and crocuses that remind me of spring and new life. ‘Come on, Rachel, you know why. She’s my daughter too.’

  I feel cold suddenly and pull Plum closer to me. She does not feel like anyone’s daughter except my own. I don’t know how he has worked this out but he has not been involved in any part of this, except the initial set-up. Surely he doesn’t think he can just come along now and expect . . .

  ‘All right if I sit?’ he says, perching himself on the edge of the bed. A nurse appears to change the water in the jug by the side of my bed and he looks up and smiles as she passes. She colours and smiles back, lingering a moment.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ she says, staring at him. I am, apparently, invisible.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says, flashing that confident, almost arrogant smile at her. For God’s sake, why doesn’t he leave? I do not want him here, do not want him being near my daughter.

  The nurse leaves eventually. He watches her go appreciatively then turns back to me and Plum. He pauses for a moment to regain his thoughts.

  ‘How’s the little boy today?’ he asks suddenly. ‘Has he—’

  ‘He’s conscious,’ I say harshly. I don’t add ‘No thanks to you’, because actually it is thanks to him. But I don’t feel that way. I feel as though he’s personally responsible for Jake’s injuries. I feel as though he’s personally responsible for drought, disease and acne at the moment.

  ‘Oh, thank God for that,’ he says, relaxing visibly. ‘I haven’t slept a wink all night. I’ve just been thinking about it all the time, what he looked like when I found him, his little arm all twisted, the blood on his face . . .’ His voice trails off and he concentrates hard on his lap for a few moments. ‘I went up there first thing, but no one would tell me anything.’ Good God, look at his face – do you think he’s going to cry?

  ‘Nick, he’s fine. He bumped his head but he’s absolutely fine now. Really.’

  He nods but he doesn’t look up and his lips are pressed hard together. ‘Thanks,’ he whispers.

  I leave it a few moments before asking, ‘Did you manage to give a description to the police?’

  He nods and clears his throat, looking up at me. ‘Yeah, quite a good one. I followed the bike for a few minutes before it happened, so I noticed the registration plate. I can’t remember all of it but I did notice . . .’ He trails off suddenly and his cheeks fill with colour.

  ‘What? What did you notice?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit embarrassing. I noticed that all the letters made up a kind of sentence, or statement, if you made a word out of each of them.’ I’m frowning, so he carries on.

  ‘It was S, then three numbers, then AAB. I was looking at it for a few minutes, trying to make words, which is a little game I play sometimes when I’m driving. Anyway, eventually I came up with: Sex in August, April Baby. The police reckon they’ll be able to track the owner down, from that.’

  ‘Oh, well, good.’ I’m more than a bit taken aback. Couldn’t he have thought of any other four words starting with those letters, especially as he had several minutes to think about it? Like maybe Stupid Arsing Arse Bastard – I came up with that one in a matter of seconds.

  ‘I was thinking about you, about the baby, when all this happened,’ he says suddenly, apparently reading my mind. ‘I wanted to speak to you at work yesterday but it was difficult – you were down in Telesales and I was upstairs and I didn’t really have an excuse to come all the way down there, you know. I didn’t want a scene but it was impossible to get you on your own, without other people . . .’

  ‘Paris, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, all right. I didn’t want her to know about . . . to overhear . . .’ He stops, then looks up at me earnestly. ‘I love her, you know, Rachel.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiles as he thinks about her. ‘Anyway, someone in ITU told me you were here so I’ve come here now to talk to you about . . . everything. I am your daughter’s father. I’ve worked it out. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  This is it. This is the moment I set Plum on one path or another. She is not yet one day old and already I have the power to make life-altering decisions for her. For me, I don’t want Nick Maxwell in my life. I can use this moment to deny him, get rid of him for ever. But what would Plum want? I’m looking at Nick, but then I look down at her lying comfortably in my arms and I find that her liquid black eyes are open and staring at me. I look into their depths and I can almost read what it says there. She is imploring me to do the right thing. She can’t speak, can’t act for herself, so she is relying on me, her mum, her fierce protector, to help her and do what is right for her. How can I deny those eyes?

  I look back at Nick and smile. ‘Do you want to hold her?’

  To his credit, he looks a little surprised and very pleased. Perhaps he wasn’t so utterly sure that he was the father. ‘Can I?’ he says, holding out his arms.

  ‘Make sure you support her head.’ I reach over and place my daughter in her father’s arms, leaving my hands there too. ‘Just, just . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, Rachel. Don’t worry.’ He bends his head and gazes into her face. Reluctantly I withdraw my hands. ‘Hello, er—’ He looks up at me again. ‘What’s her name?’

  Bloody hell! I haven’t even thought about it! I’ve been calling her Plum all night, but she can’t go to school with a name like that. ‘I don’t know. She’s just Plum at the moment.’

  ‘Plum? OK. Hello, Plum. I’m your father.’ I’m really glad for some reason that he didn’t say ‘daddy’. Father is exactly what he is. ‘It’s totally amazing to meet you.’ He looks at me again and he’s grinning. ‘She’s got your nose.’

  He’s saying exactly the right things, isn’t he? ‘Oh, do you think so? I think she’s got such a lovely little button nose but I really can’t see any resemblance.’

  ‘Oh yes, no doubt about it. Just like you. A total stunner.’

  Oh, for goodness’ sake. Look at me. I’m blushing. He really knows how to turn it on, doesn’t he? And I am pathetic! Get a grip.

  ‘When did you find out anyway? You’ve not said anything all this time.’

  He doesn’t raise his head. ‘Pretty much since I saw you at Christmas, I suppose. I heard some rumours, then I saw that you’d put some weight on. I started thinking then, but I wasn’t sure until you let Personnel know what your due date was.’ He looks at me with that lopsided grin. No, it’s not having any effect. ‘I work in Personnel. It wasn’t difficult to count back f
rom the twentieth of April.’

  ‘So why didn’t you speak to me about it?’

  His eyes flick up at me, then back down to Plum’s sleeping face, as if he can’t bear not to be looking at her. I know how he feels. We’re holding this entire conversation with our eyes locked on Plum.

  ‘Well, I couldn’t speak to you about it at work because of . . .’

  ‘Paris.’

  ‘Well, yeah. Plus I didn’t want everyone there knowing my personal business.’

  ‘OK, so why not ring me?’

  ‘I lost your number.’ He shrugs. Just like that he dismisses the weeks of misery I endured last summer.

  ‘But it’s in my personal records at work. You’re in Personnel, why not retrieve it from there?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, you’re right. I did look it up once, even wrote it down in my diary. I was going to call you that night, from home, but it was awkward. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to be . . . I don’t know. I didn’t want to intrude. No, no that’s not it exactly.’ He sighs and looks up at me. ‘I didn’t want—’

  ‘You didn’t want your wife to find out,’ I finish for him, rolling my eyes.

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud, not you as well! Where the bloody hell is this stupid rumour coming from?’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ I notice that some of the other mums and their visitors have looked round at us briefly. ‘Look, it’s no use keeping up this pretence. There’s no one else here to convince, so you might as well just come clean.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, for the last time, I am not married!’

  The ward falls silent suddenly and many more heads turn our way to stare. Nick’s words hang suspended in the air for a few moments, then dissipate like smoke. I am concentrating very hard on straightening Plum’s blanket around her.

  ‘OK, right,’ I whisper angrily, ‘so the woman who answered the phone when I rang you up was who exactly? The cleaning lady?’

  ‘When did you ring me up?’

  ‘Oh some time last year, just after we . . . It doesn’t matter anyway. The point is, who answered the phone? She said she was Mrs Maxwell. Explain that.’

  He sighs, he fidgets, he strokes Plum’s soft leg. Then he raises his head and looks into my face. ‘So it was you, all this time. Just because of . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘You’re right, she’s not the cleaning lady. Well, not in an official capacity, anyway.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not my wife either. She’s my mum.’

  I stare at him. Suddenly he looks very, very young, sitting there with our daughter in his arms, head bent over, slight flush on his smooth cheeks. ‘Your mum? But I thought . . .’

  ‘I know what you thought. But you got it wrong, didn’t you? Rachel, I’m nineteen.’

  ‘Nine . . .?’

  ‘No, not nine, for Christ’s sake. That’s ridiculous. I’m nineteen. In fact, I’ll be twenty next week.’

  ‘Y . . .? You . . .?’ Fucking hell. He’s nineteen. Jesus, that’s almost illegal. But just look at him – the full sensual lips, the long black eyelashes, the beautiful hair, the student card that’s fallen out of his jacket on to the bed. Oh dear God.

  ‘I never said I was older, did I?’

  ‘Well no, you didn’t, but you never said you were a nineteen-year-old student living with his mum, either, did you? My God, Nick. I don’t know what to say to you. Christ, you’re a father and you’re barely old enough to wet the baby’s head.’

  ‘I am not a kid, Rachel. Did I ever behave like a kid? Did you ever think for a second that I was only nineteen? Well, did you?’

  ‘Well, no, but . . .’

  ‘There you go, then. The actual number of years since someone was born doesn’t matter. What matters is how people behave, their actions. It’s maturity that counts, not actual years.’

  I’ve gone all quiet and thoughtful. Actually, I’m thinking about what Nick was like last summer. Was he mature? Did he act like a responsible adult, in spite of his age? Not really: there are two strikes against him.

  ‘You’re not old enough to be anyone’s father, Nick. Yes, you are right, it’s maturity, not age, that counts, but you fall down on both counts.’

  ‘Why do I?’ Look at him pouting now. Shall I ground him for a week?

  ‘Because you did not behave maturely, did you? Firstly, your behaviour at the end of our relationship was very childish, just ignoring me without any communication at all.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘And secondly, you got me pregnant. That’s totally irresponsible and immature, isn’t it? So your argument about your maturity just doesn’t stand up. Forget it.’

  He stares down at our daughter, his bottom lip stuck out. Then he looks up at me. ‘You hypocrite.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You. You’re a total hypocrite. I know for a fact that you have dumped people without telling them why in the past. Yes, I have been speaking to people at Horizon. At least three of them told me that you dumped them by not returning their phone calls. And you blame me for getting you pregnant, as if your actions had nothing to do with it? If I remember my biology GCSE correctly—’

  ‘It was only last year.’

  ‘Actually, it was two years ago. But that’s not the point. You know as well as I do that it takes two people to make a baby. And you didn’t use a condom either. How responsible is that?’

  Just focus on Nick for a moment, because I am opening and closing my mouth like a hungry baby, but no words are coming out.

  Do you think he’s right? Have I been irresponsible and immature?

  I don’t think you should answer that. We all know, deep down, if we think about it hard and long enough, what the answer is going to be, don’t we?

  I turn to Nick. Look at my face now – I think that’s probably the most friendly I’ve been towards him since – well, since 28 July last year.

  ‘So. You’re not married, you’re just nineteen.’

  ‘Nearly twenty. But yes, that’s the situation.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, I have to admit, weird though it is, it certainly uncomplicates things.’

  ‘Does it? How?’

  I shake my head with a smile. ‘You wouldn’t believe the soul-searching I have been doing about your poor wife. How Plum’s birth will affect your relationship; where Plum will go for Christmas; how she will get on with her half brothers and sisters, particularly if their mum is permanently resentful about your affair and brainwashes them into thinking Plum is the enemy; what kind of snide remarks or even underhand thumping she will be subjected to every day if she comes to stay with you during the school holidays; who will sit at the head table for her wedding because as her parents we should both be there, but no doubt your wife will have her own idea about that; whether Plum will have to put up with rude comments about me from your wife’s family for the rest of her life. All that stuff.’

  With his face like that – eyes wide and staring, jaw slack – you can really see just how young he is, can’t you?

  ‘Jesus,’ he says, shaking his head. Then, ‘Jesus,’ again. It seems he is momentarily unable to say any more.

  ‘OK, can I have her back now, please? I think she wants to go back to her mummy.’ I reach out my hands and wiggle my fingers.

  ‘Bye bye, Plum,’ he says, not handing her over. ‘At least for now.’

  I look up sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Rachel, I want to be part of her life. You can’t deny me that. I’m her father.’

  Shit. This is what I have been dreading. Although the whole idea of Nick seeing Plum regularly has lost a lot of its horror now that his wife is no longer on the scene.

  ‘OK. We’ll work something out. But she’s living with me.’

  He puts his hands up. ‘Fine. Absolutely fine. I think that’s definitely best.’ Yeah, because a three-year-old toddler with vomit down her pyjamas bursting unannounced into a room can kill a romantic mood stone dead.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And I�
��m going to give you money for her. That’s what I want to do – it’s the right thing to do.’

  You know, maybe he is more mature than I thought after all.

  I smile at him and lean towards him to touch Plum’s head. ‘Thank you, Nick.’ Quickly I kiss his cheek, then draw back, and our eyes lock for a moment. Then we both look away, look down towards the beauty of our daughter, our heads almost touching.

  What I can’t see, but you can, is Hector, standing just on the other side of the archway. He’s got a troubled look on his face as he watches us. See that carrier bag? It looks excitingly bulky, doesn’t it? But now he looks as if he’s not so sure. He glances at the bag then focuses back on Nick Maxwell, sitting on the side of my bed, holding my baby, and enjoying an intimate moment with me. And as he watches, I lean forward and kiss Nick on the cheek and he can hear me, quite plainly, as I say, ‘Thank you, Nick.’

  It’s just after nine fifteen now. Let’s go back a couple of hours and see what Hector has been doing since we left him getting out of the shower.

  We know he was up early, so he was ready to leave the house hours before anywhere was ready to receive him. Here he is now, standing at that huge glass wall in his kitchen with a cup of coffee. The clock says seven thirty, so still hours to go before visiting starts at the hospital.

  Half an hour later and here he is again, with the Hoover out, cleaning up the living room. He’s still glancing repeatedly at his watch, though. How much do you want to go and put your arms round him right now and give him a great big kiss? I know I do.

  Eventually it’s eight thirty and he’s in his car, driving into town. The shops don’t open for another half an hour so he parks outside the one he is most excited about and stares at the locked door for twenty-eight minutes until the manager appears inside and unlocks it. He spends an hour in there, deliberating over a very special purchase, then makes one more quick stop before heading straight to the hospital where everything in the world he cares about are.

  On the ground floor he gets into a lift and then hesitates over which floor to visit first. His anxiety for Jake struggles with his joy for me and in his mind he pictures the neo-natal ward next to the I.T.U. One is a bright, sunny place, filled with smiling faces and cheerful nurses carrying vases full of fresh flowers; the other place is dark and shadowy, a quiet place where the nurses wear grim expressions and carry nothing but tubes and thermometers and bedpans. His future lies in the sunny place, his love, his life. But there is no fear there, no anxiety, and he has no doubt that his brother and sister-in-law will be feeling both this morning. He must go to Glenn first. His finger goes to the ‘3’, but wavers again without pressing it and moves to the ‘1’. It pauses there too, then moves decisively to the ‘3’ and presses it firmly.