Iris’s face was like stone. The sharp, almost accusatory words seemed as if they were addressed specifically to her—and indeed, this was in a sense the case. The three younger ones were all of them too limp, in their various ways, to serve as targets for his anger and bewilderment. Belinda and Alison, weeping softly, were way out of reach in a sad little world of wasted pink frills and unfulfilled knitting. Silently, tearfully, they had dismantled the pretty little crib, pushed out of sight the toys and the lovingly assembled small garments, and now there was nothing left to do but cry, quietly and uselessly, until they were tired enough to sleep. And as to Merve, embarrassed and guiltily conscious of mourning the goulash far more sincerely than he at all knew how to mourn a baby—he, too, was a non-starter as either scapegoat or confidante. In his decorously downcast eyes, you could already see the stirrings of calculation: how soon, after a tragedy like this, could you decently start typing? There were no precedents to go by, for in the course of his short and boring life no one had ever died, nothing tragic had ever happened, and so he longed above all things to know how long, for God’s sake, it all had to last? It wasn’t even as if any of the unfortunate episode could be salvaged and recycled for Henry’s benefit, or for Myrtle (query Alicia). It just simply wasn’t Henry’s scene, or Myrtle-Alicia’s either. Even if she did have a baby (which would have been terribly out of character as well as biologically improbable at her age, and would have mucked up the plot beyond redemption) and even if she thereafter lost it (a worse departure still from the projected script, and even less Alicia’s thing than having one) he simply could see no way of handling all this crying over pink knitting wool and stuff. Alicia just wouldn’t: she’d be every bit as relieved as her harassed author to be rid of the superfluous little creature on the earliest page possible.
The whole evening, clearly, was going to be a dead loss: Six hours down the drain. And to what purpose? It was rotten luck on Miranda, of course it was, and if Merve’s not doing any typing would have brought the baby back to life, then he wouldn’t have grudged it for one moment, he wasn’t that heartless.
How heartless, actually, was he, then? Searching this heart of his for clues, it began to appear that he hadn’t got one, or anyway he couldn’t find it. From ribs to belly to backbone, there seemed to be nothing but a vast, gaping void.
Unnoticed, and certainly un-missed, Merve crept softly from the room. Tiptoeing into the kitchen, he extracted from the oven the blackened goulash and hurried it furtively into his room, closing the door softly but decisively behind him.
There were quite a few good bits left, if you poked around. Employing in turn knife, spoon, razor blade, nail file and scissors, Merve scooped and scraped with mounting success and gusto, but silently, and with a sort of respectful intensity, as befitted a house of mourning…
*
It was past midnight, and Iris had been alone for over an hour. The other girls had gone to bed, or she supposed they had; they’d drifted out of the room, anyway, and she’d heard nothing from them since. Merve, too, must be asleep, or having Writers’ Block, or something, for there was no sound from his room, either.
It was Tim she was waiting up for: Tim, who, having brusquely demanded of her all the 2p coins she’d got, had rushed out into the night to telephone non-existent hospitals and imaginary obstetricians.
He couldn’t say she hadn’t tried to warn him. “Wait, Tim, there’s something I want to tell you …” she’d cautiously begun; but, “For God’s sake—!” he’d interrupted impatiently, and then, “Is this all?—” glaring accusingly at the scant collection of 2p pieces she’d managed to unearth from her handbag.
So, O.K., be like that, she’d responded, but not aloud. If he wanted to waste his time and make a fool of himself on hospital switchboards the length and breadth of London…
She hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains, and now the big naked windows loomed black and vast. The shadowy room, lit by a single unshaded bulb, looked shabby and desolate; the old floorboards and the neglected woodwork creaked and sighed as they shrank and settled after the heat of the day.
Iris stirred in the big chair, and glanced at her watch. The wild goose chase seemed to be taking him longer than she’d supposed. But never mind. There wasn’t any hurry. There was no way, now, that she wasn’t going to win.
Of course, it couldn’t now be quite the same scene as she’d planned. This had been fouled-up completely and for ever by the extraordinary turn events had taken—Iris was still trying to work out the implications of it all.
In one sense, it hadn’t been extraordinary at all: indeed, up till a couple of days ago, she had taken for granted that Miranda would do just exactly what she had today done: that is, turn up as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and announce that the baby was dead. It was difficult to see what else the girl could do, and Iris’s only doubt had been whether to reveal to Tim his protegé’s monstrous perfidy before or after this dénouement.
But that was before the news of the stolen baby had hit the headlines. From then on, the prospect was absolutely changed—on the face of it, for the better: because now there was a dreadful crime to lay at Miranda’s door, on top of the lying and the treachery.
Iris’s glee had been unbounded. Her big scene was going to be even bigger than she’d anticipated. Miranda would go to prison, or Borstal, or a mental home, or somewhere, and Tim, in his shock and disillusionment, would turn for comfort to his old love…
What the hell was taking him so long? Surely it didn’t take half the night to ascertain that there was no such hospital as St Benedict’s? Or, if by chance there was, that it had never had on its maternity list any such patient as Miranda Field…?
Ah, but here perhaps was a clue. Iris had almost forgotten that it was she, and she alone, who knew the secret of Miranda’s surname. Well, not “secret”, exactly; it was just that among the unspoken house rules of the Squat was one that ordained that no one should ever be pressed for his or her true identity if they showed the slightest reluctance to reveal it. This kind of carefully-nurtured ignorance not only made for mutual trust and goodwill, but served as a useful first line of defence against the Squat’s natural enemies—parents and such. There is nothing so convincing as the truth, and “I’m sorry, we don’t know anyone of that name” was the truth so long as everyone kept to these unwritten rules.
Iris herself had come across Miranda’s surname by the merest chance. She hadn’t been looking for it. What had motivated her quick, furtive prowl round the girl’s bedroom, while its owner was having a bath, had been sheer curiosity as to what was being used as padding under that maternity smock. It was in the course of this hasty investigation that she’d come across the school sandals, and had happened to notice the smudged, inked-in letters along the underside of the strap: “M. FIELD, FORM IVA”, and had filed away the information in her mind for future reference. When the crunch came, as sooner or later it must, this was a bit of data that was going to come in useful—and, by God, it had! It had taken Iris almost one whole morning to work through one and a half columns of Fields in the telephone directory, but it had been a morning well spent. The wary male voice which had finally admitted to owning a daughter named Miranda had sounded absolutely terrified.
The cards, then, were all in Iris’s hands by now, to play exactly as she chose. Victory was certain. Only the timing was still in doubt, and how best to deploy the carefully-assembled evidence so as to maximise her rival’s humiliation.
Her rival. Iris hated to accord Miranda such status, even in the secret places of her own brain; but no other word sprang to mind. It was only now, with her own total triumph clearly in sight, that Iris could allow herself to be fully aware of the black, savage jealousy that had been consuming her ever since that first moment when Tim, bubbling over with assinine awe and admiration, had introduced this fraudulent little cow into their midst. And he a nearly-qualified doctor, too! How blind can you get?
Well, love is blind, or s
o they say; though Iris herself had never found this to be so. On the contrary, it was just when she loved most deeply that she’d always found herself most agonisingly aware of the flaws and weaknesses in the beloved.
Still, this might not be everyone’s experience; and anyway, Tim didn’t actually love Miranda—or if he did, he hadn’t allowed himself to be aware of it. But all the same, his enormous and misplaced concern for the wretched girl, his ridiculous admiration of her “courage”, had been enough, and more than enough, to awaken the black memories: the bitter, unappeased resentment. Watching him, over these past days, lavishing upon this sly newcomer all the solicitude, all the tenderness, the concern, the admiration that should have—that would have—belonged to Iris, watching all this, Iris had felt the jealousy growing in her like a disease, monstrous, out of control, poisoning the very roots of her being.
It had been weeks since Tim had slept with her; the rot had set in long before Miranda’s appearance on the scene. Exams, he’d said; nights on duty, he’d said; feelings of being pressured, he’d said. And so, to make him feel less pressured, to enable him to concentrate on his exams, Iris had had her abortion.
He hadn’t pushed her into it, she must give him that; but no one could mistake the look of relief on his face when she told him of her decision. And he’d gone on, in his relief, to do all the right things. He’d gone with her to the hospital, had visited with sympathy and flowers, had escorted her home again when it was over. He’d been unfailingly kind and attentive throughout, you couldn’t fault his behaviour anywhere.
And all the time, while he’d been behaving so well, while he’d been doing all these right things, his real feelings, deep in his heart, had been feelings of contempt and disillusion: had he not declared as much, out loud, in front of everyone, on the evening of Miranda’s arrival?
“Most girls would have chickened-out right from the start!”—these had been his very words, in tones of wonder and admiration: and it had seemed to Iris, listening quietly in the background, that there could be little doubt of the name for which “most girls” was an all-too-transparent euphemism.
So she, Iris, had merely “chickened-out”, had she? She who had done this thing for his sake, to give him back his freedom, his peace of mind, his Second M.B.?
And, of course, to make him love her again.
“I’ll give him ‘chickening-out’!” she reflected grimly; and in that moment heard the outer door slam.
Slamming doors at one in the morning. They’d have the neighbours on at them again, and perhaps another complaint to the Housing Department. And now, looking ten years older, here he was. Not a word of greeting. Not a hint of apology for having been gone so long. Just Miranda, Miranda, Miranda…
“Not a word of sense out of any of them!” he blustered, distraught and frightened, “No one’s heard of St Benedict’s … I’ve been phoning practically every maternity outfit in London, I’ve been going nearly frantic, and the only bloody thing I can get out of any of them is, “I’m sorry, but what is the patient’s surname? Bloody fools! You would think, wouldn’t you, that a young kid like that … having a baby all by herself, with no husband, no relatives … and then losing it within forty-eight hours … you’d hardly need to look it up on a bloody list! …”
Iris sat very still, savouring the moment. Her moment. It had come. Then:
“Be fair to them, Tim. She didn’t lose a baby. She never had a baby. She wasn’t pregnant at all, didn’t you realise that? She was pretending.”
She paused, waiting for a reaction. When none came, she continued; rubbing it well in:
“I spotted it within twenty-four hours, and I’m amazed that you didn’t—you with your Honourable Mention in Midwifery, and all! Didn’t it strike you as odd, the way she never seemed to…? And the way she always…?
And so and so on: while Tim stood white-faced, speechless and staring.
CHAPTER XVIII
“YOU’RE CRAZY!” Tim said at last; but already he knew that she wasn’t. You could see it in his slack jaw, his blank, shocked eyes.
“You’re crazy!” he repeated, as if still hoping, somehow, to convince himself that it was so. But of course this couldn’t happen, not with his degree of medical knowledge, and Iris’ rapier skill in directing his attention to the signs and symptoms that should have alerted him. The quick, agile way Miranda moved about the place, getting up from her chair and sitting down again quite effortlessly, with no careful lowering of the big, ungainly body; no heaving of it up again with the help of both hands, leaning forwards for greater thrust. Then there was her straight back, her easy, upright posture; the spring in her step as she moved and turned. And in addition to all this, there was the exaggerated, improbable size of her abdomen—not to mention the occasional slip-up in the shape of it, especially towards evening, when she had grown careless, and tended not to notice that her day-long padding had worked round to the left a little, or to the right, as the case might be.
And as if this wasn’t enough, what about all that mystery and evasiveness surrounding the hospital visits and the check-ups? The coincidence that they should happen on just the one afternoon in the week when Tim couldn’t take her there? Her vagueness about what the doctor had said; her bland acceptance of his culpable inaction as the baby went more and more dangerously overdue?
Tim listened. The circumstantial evidence, assembled with such painstaking venom over so many days, added up to a case so watertight as to preclude argument; and Tim knew it. White, appalled, absolutely thrown, he stared at Iris with just that look of dawning horror, of growing revulsion and disgust, that she’d been dreaming of, day and night throughout all this long ordeal; and now, at last, it was here.
“You mean,” he said at last, incredulously, “you mean that, knowing all this, you just stood by and let the poor kid sweat it out? That you did nothing to help or comfort her? Didn’t you ever for one moment wonder what sort of hell she must be going through to resort to so desperate a deception? You never wondered at all? Never asked her?—never sought her confidence—never offered help, or guidance, or a shoulder to weep on? You did nothing? Knowing what you did, you stirred not a finger to help, but just sat there watching, like a cat watching a mouse, waiting for her to crack? What sort of a woman are you?”
A good question. But Iris was not the person qualified to answer it, least of all at this moment of total disorientation. Nothing in any of those delectable scenarios she’d been so gleefully conjuring up of late had prepared her for anything remotely like this, and she couldn’t, at first, take it in. That the long-anticipated revulsion and horror should indeed be spreading across Tim’s features exactly on schedule—but that they should be inspired not by Miranda, but by her, Iris…! Her head swam. She could only stare dumbly at him, simply unable to piece together what she had heard.
Pride came to her aid at last. Pride, and that final trump card which she still had up her sleeve, and had been saving for the climax.
“‘Comfort her!’ Oh, I like that! I really dig that. ‘Did I ever wonder what sort of a hell she was going through,’ you ask me: well, now I’m going to ask you something! Did she ever wonder what sort of a hell that poor mother would be going through when she found her baby missing?—Is still going through…”
Tim’s look of blank and genuine incomprehension robbed her of the last shreds of self control. She did not wait for him to say “What mother?”, but leapt to her feet, and her voice rose to a scream:
“The mother whose baby Miranda’s stolen, you bloody half-baked fool!” she yelled. “Stolen, stolen, stolen! Your precious Miranda’s stolen a baby! It’s been in all the papers for days! Don’t you ever read anything? Or watch television? Or talk to anybody? Have you gone deaf and blind and barmy rootling after those bloody exams like a pig among garbage?—a bloody chauvinist loony bloody pig…!”
“You’re crazy!” This time, he meant it. “How could the poor kid have stolen a baby?—Hell, I mean, it doesn’t make sens
e!” Confronted with the blatant non sequitur of Iris’s wild accusations, his scientific training began to take precedence over his sense of outrage, and he found himself reasoning with her in an almost normal tone of voice, analysing the situation logically into its mutually contradictory parts.
“All right, so stealing someone else’s baby could have looked like one of the options for a girl in her predicament. The other, and far simpler, option was to come back and say that the baby had died; and it so happens that this was the option she chose. We all know she did. We were all there; we all heard her say it, with our own ears—”
Here Iris made as if to interrupt; but he silenced her.
“O.K., so she settled for the simpler of the two options; maybe she didn’t even think of the second one, but even if she did—well, for God’s sake, why would she want to do both? If she’d stolen a baby, which is what you seem to be saying, then why in the world would she come back here saying that it’s dead…?”
Iris gave him a long, steady look, holding his gaze until at last his impeccable logic faltered into silence.
“Perhaps it is,” she said.
CHAPTER XIX
JANINE WAS GNAWING restlessly at her long, beautifully lacquered finger nails—a thing she hadn’t done in years—and debating with herself, over and over, whether she dared pop in next door, here and now, before anyone else beat her to it, and reveal to poor Norah this fresh, shocking bit of news. The temptation was almost irresistible, for hadn’t Janine said all along that she felt sure Miranda Field must have had something to do with this baby-snatching business? Well, no—and this was just what was so maddening about the whole thing—she hadn’t said so, not at the time, and not in so many words; though by now she’d just about convinced herself that she’d thought it. Or very nearly thought it. It had certainly crossed her mind—well, it must have done, mustn’t it?—that the description of that fair-haired girl weeping over the pram seemed remarkably reminiscent of Miranda. If only she’d voiced her suspicions then and there, so that now she would have had the right—the duty, almost—to follow up these early speculations! To rush in next door, with all the weight and authority of “I told you so!” behind her, and cast at Norah’s shrinking feet all this exciting profusion of supportive evidence!
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