Baby Love

by Louisa Young

  They sat there, smelling at me.

  I rang the parents and told them what time to go to Neil’s office, then stared at Janie’s tea-chest for a while.

  *

  The meeting with Neil was constructive. He sat behind his enormous desk in his elegant offices in Canonbury and told us not to worry about his fee … but I know he costs two hundred pounds an hour, and whether or not the meter was running officially there would be some kind of debt run up somewhere. It made me uncomfortable but inclined to be efficient.

  ‘The child’s welfare is paramount,’ he said. ‘The court will decide what is best for her. Jim and his wife—’

  ‘Wife?’ said Mum. ‘What wife?’

  ‘He has a wife,’ I said. ‘Name of Nora. Cold-looking, clever, a career woman. Nice clothes, if you like that sort of thing.’

  ‘Which you don’t,’ said Dad.

  ‘It’s a good move on his part to have a wife,’ said Neil. ‘A lone father would be unlikely to get a residence order. Anyway, they have to persuade the court that Lily would be happier and better off, in the long run, with them. Their main weapons will be that they are richer, that they are a married couple, and the fact that Jim is her blood father. They may also try to denigrate your capacity as a parent, Angeline. Our main weapon is that you have been bringing Lily up for three years, and have done a good job. On the whole courts like not to change a situation unless there is a clear and definite benefit to the child to be had in doing so.

  ‘Courts are not that impressed by money alone, unless one side is actually incapable of providing for the child, and even then they may order the wealthier parent to maintain the child while it lives with the other. The fact that Jim has given you no financial help will tell in your favour. They are impressed by emotional stability. Jim has been married for two years – we could argue that that is not long enough to prove stability, and mention that marrying within a year of the death of a long-term girlfriend, the mother of one’s child, does not bode well either … Ange, you will have to explain your emotional situation …’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘You heard. The court will want to know – and has every right to ask – whether you have a boyfriend or boyfriends, live-in or otherwise, what your sex-life is, how it affects Lily …’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  Mum was looking at me.

  ‘What?’ I said crossly.

  ‘Do you have one, love?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘You’re not the court,’ I retorted.

  ‘Ange,’ murmured Dad.

  ‘It’ll be easy,’ I said, shrugging like a bad comic. ‘No. No, no and no.’

  ‘They won’t necessarily like that. They’ll be thinking that you might get one at any time, and that could be disruptive. You’ll fall in love with an oaf and forget all about Lily in your blind infatuation. Single women are always vulnerable, you know.’

  Was he saying it just to annoy? Getting at me, because I wouldn’t have him? Reminding me what a good qualification having a nice rich lawyer husband would be in this situation? I remembered him three and a bit years ago saying ‘and get married’. He was looking at me with sweet frank eyes.

  ‘I’m only saying what the court will think, Ange. Not what I think.’

  Yeah.

  ‘Well. You can just promise them that that won’t happen. Look ugly and sexless on the day …

  ‘And then we can point out Nora’s dedication to her career, and question whether she would be happy to sacrifice it; we can doubt that Jim is about to become a house husband. Courts prefer one person to be caring for a child, and are not impressed by strings of careful arrangements with third parties, or by nannies, au pairs, nurseries etcetera. If one of them is suggesting giving up their job to care for Lily then we may be in trouble as you, Ange, will need to continue working. However, we can say that they have no way of knowing what they are letting themselves in for, and it probably won’t work. We can also point out that Nora, who it would most likely be, is not Lily’s blood parent, is in fact a total stranger to her, and connected only by a father she does not know, and who abandoned her. We can go big on the abandonment. They may say that Jim wanted to be settled before he claimed her, in which case we can say why wait two years then? Or he may claim that he was too upset after Janie’s death, in which case we can laugh at his naivety and explain gently that caring for a child does not actually allow you to be so delicate – the child’s welfare comes before our emotions. Our big advantage is that we can prove that your way does work, while they can do nothing but promise and project. We have three years on our side.’

  ‘How nasty is it going to get?’ said Dad suddenly.

  ‘Depends how much they want her,’ said Neil. ‘At the moment we don’t even know why they do. Jim has never struck me as the paternal type, but Nora is an unknown. It could be her, persuading him. If they lose, and choose to carry on applying, they can carry on applying, as long as they have new information to bring to bear, and as long as the courts let them.’

  ‘So what happens next?’ asked Mum.

  ‘A court welfare officer goes and checks Angeline out, makes sure you’ve got loo paper in the bathroom and that kind of thing …’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I moaned, softly.

  ‘… then the court will want to see Lily, then we have the hearing. In the meantime we get our affidavits together.’

  I gave him what I’d written up already, muttering excuses and qualifications. He called in an extraordinarily beautiful girl of about twelve, who seemed to be his secretary, and asked her to photocopy it three times.

  ‘Everybody take home a copy and make a note of what they think should be in it,’ he said. ‘No need to be shy. Blow your own trumpets. People sometimes try to be polite or generous in these things, and there’s really no point. No one else is going to be. Come out all guns blazing.’

  We all stood up and made polite noises. Neil seemed terribly impressive and prosperous with his big desk and his knowledge, in command of his own world. I rather envied him it. It must be wonderfully comforting to know who you are, and what you are. I couldn’t even define my profession in the affidavit. ‘What do you do for a living, Miss Gower?’ is about the most difficult question anyone can ask me. If only I could say: ‘I’m a lawyer.’ Or: ‘I’m a doctor.’ Or: ‘I’m a dustman.’ Then everybody knows where they stand. How nice and cosy that makes them all feel. We understand each other. We are safe.

  But I don’t and I’m not.

  God, am I envying security and a steady job? What are things coming to?

  I handed my parents down the stairs and then told them I had to nip back and say something to Neil, I’d be with them in five minutes or did they want to go on. Mum flustered a little and Dad shook his head in an ‘Oh, women’ gesture, and they decided to head back to Enfield. I said I’d ring them later and bounded back up the stairs to Neil. Or tried to – I bounded two steps before my legs reminded me to try no such thing.

  ‘Neil, one thing,’ I said.

  ‘Umm-hmm?’ he said, hardly looking up from some papers on his desk.

  ‘That night we had the argument …’

  ‘Oh, Ange, that’s all right, really, you don’t need to …’

  I hushed him.

  ‘I had to get the car out of the traffic,’ I said. ‘Now I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad – I’m not.’ I wasn’t. ‘I was well over the limit and I got pulled.’

  ‘How the hell did you manage that?’ he said.

  ‘I turned the wrong way down Rupert Street. And I got pulled.’

  ‘That’s not going to look good,’ he said. ‘Bugger. At all.’

  ‘Yes, well … It’s worse. Or not.’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t prosecuted.’

  ‘And you’re not going to be?’

  ‘Umm … no …’

  ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ he said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said.

  ‘Wh
y not?’

  I felt like a five-year-old in front of the headmaster. I am not five. Neil is not my headmaster.

  ‘I arranged not to be prosecuted,’ I said.

  ‘Um, Ange?’

  ‘I had a word with …’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I … You are not being prosecuted. That’s great. I’m really glad, and thank you for being so frank. Your lawyer should always know everything that you think is pertinent to the case. It’s great you told me that. Now, the welfare officer will call you to arrange a time to come round, she’ll probably want to see Lily’s school, and your parents, and maybe your friend, whatsername, so you’ll need to help her arrange all that. Be nice to her. They have lots of power. I’ll speak to you later. Bye, now!’

  He swept me out as if I were a strange cat eyeing up his goldfish. It took me no time to realize that any notion I had of confiding all in Neil was a complete no-no, and about three seconds to realize why: if he knows, and someone asks, he has to tell. He was protecting us both. I could tell him, but then I’d have to kill him. Oh, God, Harry.

  Strolling down Canonbury Square towards the tube I suddenly felt the burden so heavily that I caught my breath. I so wanted to tell somebody – anybody – all that was going on. Just talk it through. There were so many strands, so many clouds of half-formed stuff that either was relevant or wasn’t. And relevant to what? If I talked it through, I could perhaps work out what the questions were and then try to find out some answers. Were there even any questions?

  How do we beat Jim?

  Why was Janie a whore?

  How do I get Eddie off my back?

  Ditto Ben Cooper?

  What is it with Harry?

  Yes, there were some questions.

  It was unreasonably and unseasonably hot. As I reached the station the combined smells of plane tree, hot pavement, lilac and tube air became too much for me. Even in Canonbury the air is bad, even with all these leafy squares and tall Georgian windows. I went into a reverie of tall Georgian windows and wide clear pale wooden floor; a grand piano, shafts of sunlight, a bowl of roses, real fat droopy roses from a garden, falling apart in scented abandon like an ageing mistress, like Kutchuk Hanem, not etiolated stiff-necked one-bloom-a-stem Dutch greenhouse and chemical roses. Lily drawing under the piano, me playing Chopin. I can’t play the piano. Get a grip.

  *

  I went straight to Brigid’s to get Lily, and then home via the swings and the ice-cream van. It was jangling out Lilli-burlero. Lily wanted the version with the old lady who went up in a basket, seventy times as high as the moon. She made me sing it in the street.

  *

  When we got home Ben Cooper was sitting on the doorstep.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said, not going up to the door.

  ‘Need a word,’ he said, looking for the first time I have ever seen tired, drawn and uncomfortable. Well, my doorstep is not comfortable.

  ‘Well, not now, Ben, I’ve got to get Lily her tea and then I’ll be putting her to bed …’

  ‘It’s important,’ he said.

  ‘So’s all that,’ I replied, chirpily but firmly.

  The look he gave me was almost beseeching.

  I ran through the options quickly. I’d have to talk to him.

  ‘Come back later,’ I said. I didn’t want him in the house, invading my enderun; I couldn’t ask Brigid yet again to sit for Lily.

  ‘Lily will be asleep by eight or so. Come at eight-thirty.’

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said, lumbering to his feet. ‘I don’t believe I’m being pissed about for a child’s bedtime.’

  ‘Did we have an appointment?’ I said frostily, and sashayed past him, bringing Lily with me. I hate it when people assume that children don’t matter. I hate it. ‘And please mind your language.’

  That made him laugh, at least. Bitterly, mind you.

  Lily and I went in. She said, ‘No one was pissing near him, Mum’; I said, ‘Pasta or … er … pasta?’ realizing that I hadn’t been to the shop in days; and Ben dragged himself off down the balcony like a dying elephant. I’d been afraid he was just going to park himself on the step till I was ready.

  *

  I made him sit on the deckchair outside the front door.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said.

  ‘Stop being rude to me,’ he said. ‘We must talk. Can’t we go somewhere?’

  I wasn’t letting him back in my flat. Not in the evening. Not alone. Not him. Not anyone. How much it was a question of aesthetics and domestic purity I don’t know. True, I’d felt him polluting my dream home earlier, but now I just felt very very wary. Enough changeable men had been frightening me. And I really didn’t fancy hearing his comments on Eddie’s bouquet.

  Out of naughtiness, I suggested the Winfield. Ben was not keen on the Winfield, and I knew why. In the evenings it was often full of off-duty police, talking out of turn and mouthing off. Once I’d heard a fat-arsed drunkard saying that he was going to get that Linford Christie … they were the kind of police who couldn’t bear a successful black man. Ben would be right at home with them in many ways, but he would be reluctant to speak his mind with them as earwigs. I counted on that. I wanted him to drift away, fade away, not exist any more. As I wanted Jim to, and Bates. Stupid way to behave, actually. People don’t do that when they still want something from you. And Jim wants Lily, and Bates wants my body, and Ben wants something else which is perhaps about to emerge. Oh, well, let it.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go there.’

  Why was I bothering to be nasty to him in these little ways? I knew we weren’t going anywhere. It just amazed me, yet again, how he had forgotten Lily’s very existence, and the fact that you don’t just go out and leave a kid on its own. People just do not think beyond themselves. Me, of course, included. I don’t think much past me and Lily.

  ‘Stay here, then,’ I said, making the invitation as uninviting as possible. ‘Drink?’

  I got him a glass of whisky. He was looking truly terrible. I told him so.

  ‘Yeah, well, you would too,’ he said. He looked at his whisky, as if it were something he had seen before somewhere, but couldn’t quite place.

  ‘It’s whisky,’ I said kindly. ‘You asked for it.’

  He grunted.

  ‘You drink it,’ I explained.

  Suddenly he shifted in the low, undignified deckchair. With the perkiness blown out of him I could see how out of shape he was. It was as if his confidence had been the only thing keeping him upright. He kept on gazing.

  ‘Ben, this is all very nice but it’s late and …’

  He cut me off.

  ‘When I asked you to help me out before,’ he said, pulling himself up as best he could out of his slump, ‘it was on the off-chance. It wasn’t a very good idea, and it wasn’t very likely that you would be able to achieve anything for me. I shouldn’t have done it but I did …’

  ‘Why, as a matter of fact?’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘What?’ He thought for a minute and then said, ‘Because you were there.’ That’s what he said last time. Then, with a half-smile: ‘And because I like to have women dancing around doing what I tell them.’ Then his thoughts overwhelmed him again.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘tell me everything you know.’

  ‘I know bugger all, Ben! I have not a bloody clue what’s going on.’

  He gave me an old-fashioned look.

  ‘I know that Eddie Bates is some kind of crook and Harry Makins is his minion, running some car business for him, but I can’t imagine you don’t know that. I’ve gathered that Eddie is also some kind of a perv – well, he fancies me – and that something of some kind is presumably going on involving you, or that you are interested in, but you certainly know more about what it is than I do. I know he likes to eat nice food and have a line of coke with his brandy after dinner and his maid is called Siao Yen. That’s it. Oh and he went to Paris o
n Friday night. Or said he was going to.’

  ‘Paris. Did you believe him?’

  ‘Sod knows. I don’t know and I don’t care.’

  ‘Who’d he go with?’

  I just looked at him.

  ‘Paris.’ He went into a dream. ‘And he’s coming back?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Do you know … no, well, perhaps you don’t. Listen …’

  More heavy pausing.

  ‘Eddie likes you,’ he said. A statement, not a question.

  ‘In a way,’ I said. ‘Does he trust you?’

  ‘I shouldn’t imagine he knows the meaning of the word.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he does. He just doesn’t trust it. As you wouldn’t, in his shoes.’

  ‘Anyway I stole his address book. Of course he trusts me.’

  ‘Does he … how was he when you went back there?’

  ‘How do you know I went back there?’

  ‘You left me a message, remember? Reporting in, like you’re meant to?’

  ‘He was … fine. Keen to be better acquainted.’

  ‘Oh, good … Not angry about the address book?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t imagine why even a little squit like you should imagine he could shore himself up with something so unimportant.’ I took the opportunity to embroider a little.

  ‘And what did you make of that?’

  ‘Nothing. None of my business.’

  ‘Do you not feel it becoming your business?’

  ‘No.’ I made sure not to pause before saying it. I did not want Ben knowing how very much I felt it.

  He sighed. ‘We were always friends, weren’t we, Ange?’

  What? I hate you, Ben, surely you know that?

  ‘I always felt for you over what happened with Janie. She and I were good friends, you know. She helped me out too, you know. And I helped her. Oh, yes. There were times when Janie and I really … I was always a friend to her.’

  ‘I’m not Janie,’ I mentioned.

  ‘No, no, of course not. But you know, things are getting a bit … interesting … these days and I’d like to know that I can rely on someone …’

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ I said. ‘Not on me, anyway.’

  ‘It’s a shame you said that.’