But no goggling eyes, no cries of outrage were pursuing her. No one seemed to remark her at all as she walked fast, but not too fast, down the almost empty side-street … round the corner at the bottom … and into an even emptier one, drowsy with the long afternoon’s heat. No heads leaned out of windows as she passed, no faces peered round the lace curtains. A cat licked itself on a dusty, baking doorstep; an old woman watered her geraniums; a young coloured boy, carrying a ladder, passed, whistling, on the other side of the road.
“Nah, leave it, man, leave it!” someone admonished wearily from inside one of the upstairs rooms; and gradually, bit by bit, it was borne in upon Miss X. that no one was taking any notice of her at all: that the world was still simply going about its business, just as if nothing had happened.
By the time she reached the park she was really tired, glad to sit down in the coolness under one of the great trees. Still no one was staring at her, and if they glanced in her direction at all, it was only with that mild, benevolent interest that the sight of a baby in arms sometimes arouses in women who have had children of their own, especially those who are now past having any more.
“How old is the little dear?” asked the comfortable, bespectacled Gran who was sitting on the bench next to her; and for a moment, Miss X. felt a horrid little twinge of alarm. How old was the baby? Very young, almost new-born, she’d guessed; but suppose she’d guessed wrong? Suppose her companion, suddenly and terrifyingly knowledgeable (on the basis, perhaps, of thirteen children of her own and countless nephews, nieces, grandchildren)—suppose she were to peer closer into the baby’s face, and then, puzzled and suspicious, turn upon Miss X. and say…
But she didn’t. On the contrary, she didn’t even seem to notice that her question hadn’t been answered:
“Aah!” she said, laying down her knitting to smile and cluck her tongue at the sleeping infant. “Aah, they’re lovely at this age, aren’t they, dear? Pity they have to grow up!”—and then, clucking some more and beaming even closer into the baby’s face, she continued, innocently as ever:
“Lovely, isn’t he?—Or is it a little girl?”
And it was only now, for the very first time, that it dawned on Miss X. that she hadn’t the faintest idea. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that her prize could be other than female, simply because this was what she so passionately wanted it to be. But of course you couldn’t really tell just by their faces, not at this age.
Just wait a moment, and I’ll have a look—Miss X. had to suppress a hysterical giggle as the only straightforward and honest answer flashed through her mind. Then, pulling herself together, she took the plunge.
“A little girl,” she said boldly, and felt a surge of fear at thus tempting Providence; and then a surge of wild longing to go home straight away, undress the child, and find out for sure…
Home? She must be out of her mind! Bidding the old lady a hasty goodbye, she heaved herself to her feet, and clutching the unprotesting little bundle close to her, she hurried across the grass until she reached the shelter of a little clump of bushes alongside the Ladies. There, half-hidden in the long grass, she sat down with the baby in her lap and began, with trembling fingers, to pick her way through the plethora of lower garments—poor little thing, far too many layers of wool and nylon for a day like this!—until she reached at last the soaked, steaming nappy—an old-fashioned towelling one, fastened with two large safety pins, savage and gigantic alongside the tiny thighs.
One pin… Two pins…
A girl! So she had been right! Although the chances of being right had been every bit as good as the chances of being wrong, it seemed to Miss X. like a sign from Heaven, a direct message from God himself that this truly was her baby. By guessing right, she had actually made it her own! Male and female created he them, but she, Miss X., had managed at will to create female only, simply by saying so! “A little girl,” she had told the old woman, boldly and uncompromisingly, thus bringing into being this tiny, pink female crease between the tirelessly pedalling thighs.
“Let it be a girl!” she had commanded; and it was a girl!
Strange that she, who hadn’t thought about religion in years, and had certainly never believed in miracles, should suddenly find herself in possession of such powers!
CHAPTER XVI
THE FORTY-EIGHT hours were over, and Miranda was due back at the Squat that very evening.
Everything was ready. The pink nylon net had been bought, and gathered into a pretty frill round the borrowed crib with its second-hand sheets and blankets, lovingly washed and ironed. A patchwork quilt, all pinks and mauves and tiny white flowers, had been donated by the sister-in-law of one of the girls in Alison’s office, and was now draped in readiness over the end of the crib, the washed-out colours and slightly frayed seams blurred into an allover radiance by the evening sun. All the members of the Squat—even Merve—were gathered round, as if at some shrine, awed and expectant, while out in the kitchen the celebration dinner—one of Iris’s special goulashes, with garlic and red peppers—was gently simmering.
“Just imagine—Baby Caroline will be actually here—actually this evening!” murmured Alison, gazing wonderingly into the waiting crib. “Fancy—her little golden head against the white—”
“It won’t be golden,” Iris was beginning, “New born babies are always …” but Alison seemed not to have heard. “… Against the white pillowcase,” she continued, as if there had been no interruption. “I’m glad it was the white ones your cousin sent us in the end, Belinda, and not the yellow. For a very fair baby, yellow would be awful…”
“And unlucky, too,” put in Belinda. “Yellow’s one of the unlucky colours. Not as bad as green, of course, but not too good… I warned her at the time—my cousin—not to buy them, but she wouldn’t listen, and sure enough Jonathan got this awful rash when he was only five weeks old … all over his tummy and bottom, and it must have been horribly itchy, because he cried and cried, they got no sleep for the best part of a week. She couldn’t say I hadn’t warned her. It’s the middle band of the spectrum, you see: the red end’s all right, and the blue end’s all right, but in the middle—No, Tim, it’s not nonsense! Even the scientists are beginning to accept the idea that colours can affect things. They did this experiment with school classrooms—I was reading about it only recently—with some of the classrooms painted blue—I think it was—and the others orange: and they found that the children in the orange classrooms…”
“Shush!” Alison’s voice was shrill and urgent—“Listen—isn’t that a taxi drawing up outside?”—and they all rushed to the window.
But it wasn’t. They drew back their craning necks and returned to waiting stations. A little querulous now, from the mounting tension, they resumed the conversation from where it broke off. Somebody pointed out that if there were indeed some parts of the spectrum that were unluckier than others, then white must be the unluckiest of all, since in it were contained all the colours.
Naturally, Belinda wasn’t going to give in that easily. After barely a moment’s hesitation, she managed to recall yet another article she’d read, in The Scientific American, or Amazing Predictions, or somewhere, to the effect that…
Alison, almost in tears, struggled to shut them all up and restore the mood of almost religious ecstasy with which the vigil had begun.
“Oh, please don’t let’s be having a stupid fight about nothing just when Miranda’s coming home!” she wailed. “Just imagine—for Baby Caroline—if the first human words she hears are a silly argument about spectrums—Oh, all right, ‘spectra’ if you like!—That’s just exactly the sort of thing I mean! Look, let’s drop all this, and talk about the baby, shall we?”—here she glared ferociously round the little circle, daring any of them to challenge this switch to holier ground—“Oh, I do so wonder that she’ll be like, don’t you. Of course, we know she’s fair, and her blue eyes and everything: but I mean what she’s actually like? … You know…?”
; *
Iris listened to the idle, baseless speculations that were being tossed to and fro; and now and then allowed a tiny pitying smile to curl her lips, when none of them were looking.
For she, and she alone, actually knew what the small face would be like which was so soon to nestle on that pillow: for had she not seen photographs of it, by the dozen, in every single newspaper, ever since yesterday morning?
And she alone, likewise, knew what was going to be wrong with the child.
Because, of course, the baby which Miranda, all starry-eyed and maternal, was going to lay reverently in that crib, was not going to be a new-born baby at all, but one turned three weeks old.
With secret, growing impatience, which was like a sort of greed, Iris savoured the coming scenario.
Alison, Belinda and Merve would, of course, be taken in completely. “Gosh, isn’t she big!” one of them might exclaim admiringly: but that sly little cow had already forestalled that line of thinking by announcing that the baby had weighed nine-and-a-half pounds at birth—quite unnecessary, actually, since a new baby actually loses weight for its first few days, and by three weeks may have done little more than catch up to its original weight. But Miranda wouldn’t know this.
Tim would, though. After all those years of medical training, let alone having just recently got through his midwifery course with flying colours, he could hardly fail to be familiar with so basic a fact. He would be familiar, too, with the differences that do exist between a new-born baby and one that is three weeks old. If not at first glance, then certainly the moment he picked it up, he would know. He would recognise at once that indefinable firmness of texture, that solidity of contour, which three weeks’ exposure to the great outside world gives to the limp, tacky body of the new-born. He would feel the already purposeful thrust of the maturing muscles in the tiny, and yet no longer stick-like, limbs; he would see the eyes, wide open, and already trying to focus; and he would know. He could not help knowing.
And if, somehow, he did fail to recognise these signs, then Iris would lose no time in enlightening him. And this alternative scenario, as it took shape in her mind, was in some ways even more delicious than the first.
“Goodness, fancy her eyes being so wide open, as if she was really looking at you!” Iris envisaged herself saying innocently: and, “Good heavens, how strong she is! Just feel, Tim!—did you ever feel muscles like that on a new-born baby? …” “And her skin so rosy and firm … no redness … no wrinkles…” On and on she would pile the apparently innocent compliments, from the shape of the child’s head—“Fancy, no moulding!”—to the strength of its cry, and the confident vigour of its search for breast or bottle, its general air, in short, of having already learned the tricks of its trade. She pictured the bewilderment on Tim’s face … the slow dawning of suspicion … and then, finally, the utter shock as the truth hit him: the horror, dismay and revulsion…
Iris felt the black jealousy of the last few weeks subsiding. The celebration bottle of wine Tim had brought in winked in the sunset light; and Iris almost winked back.
She could hardly wait for it all to begin.
*
Trying to get the baby dressed that afternoon, Miss X. had found herself a bag of nerves, terrified of every creaking board, even of every passing footstep in the street.
Until now, she had been sustained by a sort of euphoria, compounded of delight in her new little companion, and triumph at having got away with it: of having outwitted the lot of them! A dozen times a day, turned down as low as a whisper, she would listen to the news of her crime, gloating over every false trail, every misleading clue that the police were so painstakingly investigating.
Sometimes, seething with secret mischief, she felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to tease them a little; to play Hunt the Thimble with them, as at children’s parties long ago: “Colder… colder … bit warmer now… Ah, colder again! … ice-cold … free-eezing!”—laughing behind her hand as they stumbled this way and that in accordance with her directions, sometimes veering in the right direction, more often in the wrong… Wrong … wrong … wronger…!
It was an impulse that must be resisted, of course. Probably most successful criminals are assailed by it at times—“Ha-ha! Sold again! This is how I did it, you silly goons…!”—but this way disaster lies. Miss X., like so many another malefactor, must keep her cleverness to herself.
And she had been clever; there could be no doubt about that. To have thought of this hiding place, so obvious, and yet so cunningly camouflaged as to put absolutely everyone off the scent—this had been a stroke of genius. In contemplating her own ingenuity, and silently congratulating herself upon it, Miss X. felt her panic subsiding, and she applied herself once more to getting the baby into its clean clothes. She yearned to have something prettier than these old things to dress the little girl in, but of course it was impossible. It would be madness to be caught shopping for baby clothes at just this juncture; probably every mother-and-baby outfitters in London had been alerted by now, and would be keeping an eye open for new and suspicious customers.
Never mind. It wasn’t going to be for long, and meanwhile these second-hand oddments were better than nothing: better, certainly, than the thick, wintry woollies that the child’s former mother had put on her. Miss X. had lost no time in getting rid of those, and not only because they could prove incriminating. She wanted also to get rid of every trace of the child’s former life and thus make it totally hers. Above all, she intended to get rid of the ridiculous Christian name it had been burdened with—“Dawn”, of all things—did you ever hear of anything so affected and soppy? And even worse, “My Dawnie”, as the woman was wont to say when interviewed by the Press.
Leaning close, Miss X. tried to whisper to the baby its new name, the lovely old family name she’d had in mind from the very beginning, or even before: but, as always when she came to pronounce the syllables, memory surged back, and she found herself choked with tears.
But this was no time for sentiment: there was a lot still to be done. When the last of the waving little pink limbs had been inserted into the faded cotton romper suit several sizes too large, Miss X. laid the child in the crib she had by now improvised out of a cardboard box, and hurried to prepare a bottle—by no means an easy task in this neglected and somewhat unhygienic place, where nothing seemed to work, and water ran brown from the taps. Even getting the milk to the right temperature was quite a problem, let alone sterilizing bottle and teat; and all the time there was the fear that the baby might start crying before she was ready. This had been the biggest hazard all along, and though Miss X. had worked out an ingenious way of tackling it, it wasn’t really a satisfactory way, nor particularly pleasant for the baby. Each time, Miss X. hated doing it, and could only hope that the procedure wouldn’t end up giving the child a complex, or something.
Still, it wasn’t going to be for long. Soon, all these precautions would be a thing of the past.
*
Seven o’clock … eight o’clock … and still Miranda hadn’t returned to the Squat. The sun had long gone off the pink-frilled crib, leaving it pallid and tatty-looking. The goulash was slowly spoiling in the oven, and the reception committee was growing anxious and restive.
“I told you one of us should have gone and fetched her,” Tim grumbled; and Iris reminded him, rather sharply, that Miranda had particularly requested that this should not be done, ringing up the next-door people specially with a message to this effect.
“Don’t you remember, I told you, she said she’d been moved to an annexe, or something, she wasn’t sure exactly where …?”
“You could have found out,” Tim retorted. “It’s not all that difficult to…” But before Iris had time to retaliate, a little squeal from Alison brought them all to their feet.
“A car…! I can hear it slowing down!” she shrieked; and once again there was a stampede to the window—only to find that the car was indeed slowing down, but only preparatory
to turning the corner at the end of the road.
“Let’s eat,” proposed Merve, sniffing hungrily at the aroma of soon-to-be-ruined goulash; and while the party were still debating this heartless suggestion—more and more favourably as the minutes passed—a slight noise from outside brought the chatter to an abrupt halt.
There in the doorway stood Miranda, slim, white-faced, and quite alone.
“She’s dead. Baby Caroline is dead,” she announced, calmly and firmly; then flung herself onto the sofa, sobbing as if her grief would never end.
CHAPTER XVII
THEY WERE ALL absolutely stunned, and for several seconds no one spoke at all. Then, in two strides, Tim was across the room and kneeling by the stricken girl. Iris had to stand by and watch his arms going round the barefaced little fraud, listen to his voice murmuring condolences for the phoney bereavement into her damp, wild hair.
“Oh, my dear…! Oh, Miranda, love, how absolutely awful for you! But remember, you’ve still got us… We’re all here … we’re all going to help you …”—and then, a little later—“you wouldn’t like, would you love, to tell us how it happened…? Talk about it…”
No, she wouldn’t. By hunched shoulders, and a small shake of her head half-buried in cushions, Miranda indicated as much, and Tim did not press her, nor allow any of the others to do so. Later, when Miranda was at last in bed and asleep, drugged into unconsciousness by a heavy dose of Mogadon, he harangued the others almost as if it was all their fault:
“On no account is anyone to question her, or worry her in any way,” he ordered, his voice taut and peremptory with concern, “especially you girls—I know what you are, I know you’re all wild with curiosity—and come to that, so am I. I’m not going to rest, I assure you, until I’ve found out exactly what did happen, and who’s responsible—but not by asking the poor kid herself! She’s in a state of shock. Do you understand—no one is to ask her anything at all, or bother her in any way whatsoever. Is that clear….?”
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