by Tessa Hadley
— Sleeps like a dream all day, keeps me up at night. Give him over, Ben. Make us a cup of tea. This is my Auntie Claire.
— Hello, Auntie Claire.
— Or we could open a bottle? Claire suggested.
— Give the baby to her, she needs a cuddle. I’m not supposed to drink anything fizzy, am I, in case it gives him wind. I’m not going on with this breastfeeding lark for long, whatever Mum thinks. If I put him onto formula, then Ben can get up with him in the night.
Ben lifted the baby in one hand with easy confidence, supporting his lolling head as he handed him over, still sleeping, flushed with heat from his father’s chest. No wonder Ben had his T-shirt off, they had the central heating turned up very high, goodness knows what that was costing Susan. Claire dropped her bags and took the damp live package of baby anxiously where she stood, putting all her effort into holding it safely – taking in the loose limbs like a doll’s, the tiny frowning face and liver-dark pursed lips, the curve of his eyeballs under the fine skin of his closed lids. His eyebrows were faint exquisite brushstrokes. He stirred and mewed against her and Claire thought he was going to cry; the helplessness of babies disturbed her. — He’s beautiful, she exclaimed, not quite sincerely, half repelled by the smothering sour smell.
— Like I said, you can have him, Amy said. She came in with wine glasses from the little kitchen space at the back, more like a scullery. Although some of the walls in the house had been painted and there was a new IKEA sofa, Claire could see that the kitchen units were the same cheap wood veneer ones their mother had bought in the 1980s, when Claire and Susan were at school. A door was missing from one of the cupboards, exposing the piles of bowls and plates.
— My auntie’s come all this way just to have a look at His Lordship. Don’t you think she’ll be disappointed?
— He’s pretty boring, Ben said. — He doesn’t do much. I was expecting more.
Claire thought he looked at her with curiosity: perhaps she wasn’t as he’d imagined Susan’s sister, if he’d imagined her at all. Susan was only three years older, but she’d stopped bothering with her appearance – Claire had seen the photographs. She cut her hair herself and hennaed it out of a packet, just like they did when they were teenagers; her face was sagging into lines of worry and her cheekbones were sharp knobs jutting out under the skin. Amy began hunting for pictures on her phone, of the baby in his football outfit. When Claire said that she could remember holding Amy when she was no bigger than Calum, that it seemed like yesterday, Amy was hardly interested – for her, clearly, the history of babies had begun all over again with this one, nothing that had happened before could compare with it.
— She’s grown a bit since then, Ben said.
She flicked at him with a tea towel, more interested in her photographs – there seemed to be hundreds of them, though the baby was only a few weeks old. Ben knew how to open champagne, he said he was working part-time in a bar; he was a swaggering performer, full of flourishes. It was easy to see why Amy was attracted to him, and why Susan had been set against him at first: he was one of those boys who traded on their suggestive, languorous flirting. Claire knew that he’d been in trouble – over some minor drug dealing, and then when he’d had an apprenticeship with a Ford dealer until they’d caught him selling spare parts on eBay. Susan had blamed him for Amy’s lack of ambition – but now he was living here with them, forgiven, part of the family. When the champagne was poured they all chinked glasses and Claire sipped cautiously, then put her glass down – it was the first alcohol she’d touched since Saturday night, and anyway she was intensely concentrated on the heated bundle in her arms, afraid of somehow dropping or hurting him.
The baby began writhing, his tiny face scrunched up in petulance. When he gave a bleating, penetrating cry, it was a relief to hand him back to Amy, who casually pulled up her top and tugged up her bra, offering him her swollen breast – this seemed too huge at first for him to find his way to the nipple, though he snuffled and gobbled for it desperately. Ben bent over the mother and child and made encouraging smacking noises with his lips. It was impossible to think of that breast now as having any part in sex or desire. Claire topped up their glasses and chatted; she was working hard to charm these young people. It was almost like a continuation of the last few days, putting herself across forcefully while giving an impression that she was making no effort at all – first in the board factory in Chingford, then with the service team in Northampton. The company she worked for made instruments for testing various materials – paper, plastic film and textiles – measuring thickness and tensile strength. Her role was in cultivating their long-term relationships with the manufacturers who used these instruments; she had to coax people into doing what she knew would work best for them. Now here she was handling her own family using some of the same tactics. At just the right moment she handed out the presents she had brought: offhandedly, as if they’d only been a passing thought. In this world of her home, where everyone was so quick to take offence or feel condescended to, she mustn’t seem to be throwing her money around.
Amy felt the quality of the wool shawl appreciatively, still holding the baby to her breast. She said it would be perfect for the christening. — Mum’s getting us the christening gown.
— He’s going to be christened?
— You know what Mum’s like.
— Do I?
— Otherwise she’d be worrying about his eternal soul or something.
Claire was careful not to sound too surprised. — Susan used to be dead set against anything to do with the church.
— Maybe she used to be.
Amy grew evasive then, as if she didn’t want to talk about her mother – although when she Skyped Claire in America it was usually to complain over some conflict with Susan. But it was different talking here, in this house. And she’d never mentioned before that Susan had found religion. — She changed, didn’t she, after Nanny died.
— That makes sense, Claire said. — Of course.
— She has to have something to hold on to.
— She works too hard, Ben said. — They take advantage of her at that place. They take the piss, seriously.
Susan worked as a carer, visiting elderly and disabled people in their homes, helping them with washing and dressing. Something made Claire uneasy in how Amy and Ben spoke about her sister, turning her into some kind of saint: worn down, put upon, patient and endlessly giving. She recognised a tone of voice in which people had once talked about their own mother, hers and Susan’s. They had reacted against that tone when they were teenagers, hating something sanctimonious in it – and dreading that they would have to become this kind of woman in their turn. Now Ben and Amy explained indignantly how, because of the government’s austerity cuts, funding for social care had been cut to the bone – the carers were only allowed fifteen minutes for each visit, and weren’t even paid for the time it took to drive from one appointment to the next. But Ben was strong and young and capable; if he had contributed more to the household income, Claire thought, then Susan could have cut back on her hours. Everyone loaded all this long-suffering virtue onto their mother figure, to save themselves from trying any harder.
Ryan arrived back from the sixth-form college, where he was studying for his A levels; Claire saw how he exchanged quick glances with Amy as soon as he saw her, and took his cue from his sister – they acted as if there had never been any dreadful falling-out, and it was the most natural thing in the world that their aunt was sitting here at home with them. Ryan was a sweet-natured, odd-looking boy – his face still the big, open child’s face Claire remembered, attached now to a man-sized body. He and Ben were pleased with the T-shirts she had brought – she had guessed that Ryan needed extra-large. Amy liked her perfume. When Ben was going to go out in the garden to smoke, he pretended to wrap himself up in the baby’s new shawl for warmth, and she was outraged. — I don’t want him stinking of fucking weed at his christening.
— Swear
box, swear box, said Ryan reproachfully.
Amy explained that the swear box was going towards Calum’s education; Ben said he’d be able to afford fucking Eton at this rate. Ryan lifted the baby expertly onto his shoulder, patting its back to bring up wind, putting on a comical posh voice to talk to it. — I say, Ponsonby-Warner, old chap, how was dinner?
When the baby delivered a satisfying burp they laughed with delight.
Claire thought warmly then how good they were – her family – at this baby business. So many of her middle-class friends, in England and America, made such a meal of it: they bought all the baby books and knew all the good advice but the arrival of babies was somehow ruinous in their lives: they grew nagging and crabbed, resentful of the loss of all their fun. Their young children gained the wrong kind of dominion over them, needing to be endlessly coaxed and negotiated with, ferried backwards and forwards to their ballet classes and violin lessons. But Amy had been so inspired and so quick when she was a tiny girl, entertaining the family with her naughty Spice Girls imitations, dressed up in a tacky pink fairy outfit at the Muni – the Municipal Club, where they used to go because Claire and Susan’s father was big in the rail union.
— Can I have another cuddle? Claire said. — I don’t get enough of this.
Tenderly Ryan handed him over, putting him up on her shoulder where he slumped, content. — Mind he doesn’t flob all down you, Ben said; he tucked a muslin cloth solicitously under the baby’s head and into the neck of her dress at the back and she felt his fingers faintly – inoffensively – flirty and caressing. Probably the champagne had gone to her head, just the least little bit. While they were all still laughing, they didn’t hear Susan come in through the front door. Then she was calling out to her grandson in the midst of all their laughter, while she was hanging up her coat in the hall – they couldn’t see her yet, she couldn’t see them. For an uncanny moment Claire seemed to hear her mother’s old sing-song voice, performing her old role. — Who’s my bestest bestest boy in the whole wide world then?
— That was me, once, Ryan drily said.
— Who’s Nanny’s little darling? Has he been a very good boy today, has he?
When Susan came into the room she was already reaching out her arms to scoop up the baby. Then she saw that Claire was there, that she was holding him: Susan stopped still, her arms dropped by her sides, and the smiles on her face all shut down.
WHAT HAD HAPPENED was this. When Susan’s husband left her she’d moved back with her four children into this house, which their parents owned – their father had worked all his life on the railway, and had saved enough out of his wages to put down a deposit and then pay off a mortgage over the years. They had always been proud to own a house, in a street where most of the properties were rented. Then Susan had nursed both their parents through their last illnesses – Claire was still living in London then, and helped out when she could, but of course Susan took the brunt of it. After their mother died, Susan took it for granted that she could go on living in the family home, although in their parents’ wills it had been left to both daughters equally. She had never paid any rent, in all those years. Claire had wanted the money to put down on a flat in London – the one she still owned, and had sublet while she was living in the US – and she suggested that Susan could raise a mortgage on the house, to buy her out of her half. Actually she hadn’t even asked for half, she’d asked for a lot less. And Susan had done this, but had stopped speaking to her.
When Susan saw Claire, she turned round without even looking at the baby or anyone, and went upstairs to shut herself in her bedroom, slamming the door.
— I’d better go, Claire said.
— Don’t be daft. Amy was righteous. — You stay. It’s her problem. I don’t know why she’s being such a cow.
— It was all my fault.
— It was years ago, Ryan said. — She ought to get over it.
— I’ve tried again and again to say I was sorry. You know I wanted to pay her the money back, and she wouldn’t take it?
Embarrassed, they didn’t want to hear about the money. — You’re not going anywhere, Amy said. — We’re going to talk her round. This is an opportunity.
— I thought if she just came in and found me here, it might be all right.
Even as Claire explained in her reasonable calm voice, ripe with regret, she was aware of trying to win them over. This version of what had happened wasn’t in the least how Susan saw it. Susan thought there was something monstrous in Claire’s selfishness: to turn her back on her family, go south in pursuit of her career and leave her sister to the whole work of nursing their mam and daddy – and then, when they were gone, to demand her share of the property! But Claire was convinced that it had been reasonable, in fact, for her to ask for her share. She had needed a home, too. She had worked very hard to get on in the life she’d chosen, and that inheritance, small as it was, had been her only opportunity to start on the property ladder in London. Perhaps there had been something manic, though, in how she’d insisted on her rights at that time when they were both of them raw from the loss of their mother.
She also knew that however she succeeded in charming Susan’s children, and however indignant they grew over Susan’s stubbornness, deep down their loyalty to her was tribal – Claire could never wheedle her way round it. They thought they knew Susan. But Claire knew her better: this bitter old fight, not at all in keeping with the saintly mother they believed in, had begun long before there was any quarrel over inheritance. Susan hadn’t planned on becoming saintly. In another lifetime, it might have been her who left and Claire who stayed. When Susan was seventeen or eighteen, you’d have thought she’d be the one, with her gelled-up hennaed hair and wild politics – she was the one who’d scared their parents and stayed out all night, or come home sodden with drink. There wasn’t any particular moment at which that changed, it wasn’t when she gave up her A levels or met her husband or had her first babies. Or it was because of all of those things. She had somehow drifted into becoming a good girl.
THEY TOOK IT in turns to try and coax Susan out. Her room now was the small back bedroom which had once been Claire’s: the double room at the front was given over to Amy and Ben and the baby. Unfortunately this back room had a bolt on the inside – Claire had fixed it herself, when she was going through a private phase – so they had to remonstrate with Susan through the closed door. Ryan took her up a glass from the second bottle of champagne, Amy stood outside with Calum, putting on a baby voice, begging her to come out, telling her she was being a daft bugger. She wouldn’t speak, except to ask them whether Claire was gone. — I’ll come down when she’s gone out of this house, she said, as melodramatic as if she were in a book. It was as though she seized this licence to be excessive and unreasonable, in return for all the years of putting herself last.
The bathroom was built on at the back of the house, on the ground floor, beyond the kitchen; surely she’d have to come down sooner or later, Ryan said – she must be busting up there. When Amy began cooking supper, Claire offered to take over, and made spaghetti and mince with what was in the fridge. She could have found her way around that kitchen in the dark – though it wasn’t dark, their daddy had put in a glaring neon light. Her hands remembered like old friends, or old enemies, how the knife-and-fork drawer stuck, and how to adjust the knobs on the temperamental electric cooker, whose markings had worn away long ago. She served up for everyone, putting out some dinner for Susan too. The dining table had been moved into the front room, so the young ones had their plates on their laps in front of the telly.
Shutting the door deliberately behind her, Claire took Susan’s plate upstairs and stood adjusting to the quiet on the landing, in the near-dark; she thought she could feel her sister breathing, out of sight. In the tension the two of them must each be listening out for the other, half hating and half exulting – like in the old days when they’d acted up together, playing out some game, swelling with the laughter
that must not erupt. Trying the stainless-steel handle, holding onto the plate of spaghetti with its fork, she put her whole weight against the door, which wouldn’t give. Then she spoke into the crack of the frame, the gloss paint cool against her cheek, feeling the power of what was withheld on the other side. Its resistance to her was fundamental, primal. — Sue? If you’ll just let me in for one moment, I promise I’ll go. I don’t want anything. I only want to see you. I brought you something to eat.
The silence and stillness persisted, obdurate as something material between them. She rattled at the handle, then put her free hand flat against the door and felt as if she was receiving some signal through her palm from inside the room: alongside the resentment there was recognition, she was sure of it. — Let me in, I know you’re listening to me, she said.
All evening she kept up her entertainment of Susan’s family. Ben went round to the shop with a twenty-pound note she gave him for more drink, Amy supplied all the grisly details of the birth, they discussed Amy and Ryan’s older sisters – a nurse and a teaching assistant, both living in Manchester. They talked about Ryan’s girlfriend and Ben’s plans – and films they’d seen, and TV soaps. They were all full of plans. Claire was good at taking an interest in other people’s lives. She said a little bit about America when they asked her, not making too much of the things she preferred about living over there. All the time she was distracting them from worrying about their mother upstairs. When she said she ought to go, and asked about hotels in town, Amy insisted she wasn’t staying anywhere except right here.
