by Helen Walsh
‘Just let him finish, Rachel, please.’
I catch Faye’s eye. She looks away quickly, concentrates on tying up the nappy sac.
‘Jan. Please give him back.’
‘Rachel . . .’
‘Jan!’
She dips her head slightly, won’t meet my accusing stare.
‘Baby’s doing fine, now. He was very distressed.’
‘Oh, was he now? So you decided to shut him up with that poison.’
‘Poison? What choice did you leave us? He was starving.’
‘Really?’
I come up close to her, try to calculate how best to remove my baby from her clutches without hurting him. Now she looks up. She looks deeply and angrily into my eyes.
‘Yes, Rachel, he was. Wasn’t he, Richard?’ Dad hangs his head, sighs out loud. ‘Rich?’
I ward Dad off with a look, then gently but firmly remove Joe from Jan’s arms.
‘Thaaaaaank you.’ I hold him to my face, nuzzle his cheeks with my nose. ‘Hello, little tiny. How’s Mummy’s boy?’
He bursts into tears. I sit down, put him to my breast, already leaking skinny dribbles down my ribcage. Jan doesn’t look vindicated; she just looks sad. Faye mugs a sympathetic smile, squeezes my wrist and says in a low whisper:
‘He’s gorgeous, Rachel. I’ll come and see you both again soon.’
She lets herself out, grateful, I sense, to be out of here. In the periphery of my eyeline I see Jan get up too, kiss Dad on the cheek. She murmurs into his ear.
‘You sure now, Rich?’
I can’t crane round far enough to see Dad’s reaction but I know from the silence that it’s not what she wants to hear. There’s a prolonged, deadly pause.
‘Okay. You look after yourself.’
‘You too.’
A kiss: brief, bitter. I can feel Jan glaring at the back of my head. Then the door clunks shut and I hear her footfall on the stairs.
‘Happy now?’
‘What?’
Dad flings himself down at the table, all sighs and facial inflections, his features battling between regret and remorse.
‘What?’ I repeat.
He sighs again, already coming to terms with things. Dealing with it. He never did like shouting at his little girl. He looks up at me, vainly breastfeeding my formula-engorged child and he can’t help smiling as he shakes his head. ‘What were you thinking, honey?’
‘I just needed some time. I’m sorry.’
He peers hard at me now, and a look comes over him. I shirk away, drop my gaze on to Joe.
‘Is everything okay?’ he says.
I take a deep breath, almost surrender to the riot of injustice pushing up my throat when he leans his chair back on to two legs.
‘Is this a cry for help?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Today?’
‘Dad! Stop talking in tongues! What about today?’
He eyes me very carefully; seems close to saying something, then swallows it back down. His face is tense. He turns away from me.
‘Nothing.’
He gets up, paces to the window.
‘So . . .’
He fiddles with the curtains, tucking them neatly into the brass hooks – seahorses, actually – that keep them back from the window. I know what he’s doing. He’s watching Jan get into her car, and he’ll watch until her tail lights have disappeared out of sight. And he is . . . he’s crying, there. I’m sure of it. I try to think through how I can lay Joe down and get across to comfort Dad when it finally dawns on me. Today.
‘Oh, shit!’ I almost drop Joe as my hands flinch up to my face. ‘Oh Dad, Dad . . . I’m so sorry! I completely forgot. What time is your flight?’
I stuff the bottle back in Joe’s mouth and hand him to Dad. I dash to the phone, buttoning up my bra and tripping over the bagged nappies.
‘What are you doing, Rachel?’
‘I’m calling you a cab.’
‘No. No, Rachel.’
‘Dad you can still make it! Easily . . .’
‘NO!’
I almost drop the phone in shock.
Dad shakes his head, removes his glasses and rubs his eyes with his knuckles. ‘Rachel. Darling. No. That is not going to be happening. It never was – not once you made your feelings clear.’
‘Dad. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I walk towards him. I do know what he’s talking about. I remember what I said, now. I hate myself; but I hate her, too, for telling him. For saying she’d deleted it. Dad affects a smile for me.
‘Look. It was a bad idea to begin with. I don’t know what I must have been thinking.’
‘But . . . what about Jan?’
He laughs but the corners of his eyes are creased with anxiety.
‘Janine’s a survivor.’ And then, as though to offset any pity I might direct towards him, he adds, ‘I’m quite looking forward to it actually. It’s a long time since I’ve experienced the privilege of solitude.’
‘She’s going to think I did this on purpose. I know she will. Dad, I’m sorry. I truly, truly didn’t plan this.’
‘Rachel. It’s okay – really. It’s fine.’
He forces another smile to let me know that’s that; subject closed. He guides my eyes down to Joe with a nod. He’s fallen asleep on the bottle.
‘Sorry, little man,’ I say and gently remove the bottle from his mouth. ‘But I’m going to have to wake you for your bath.’
‘No need,’ Dad says. ‘Jan bathed him.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. She’s quite smitten with the little fella. Wouldn’t let anyone else near him.’ And even in the circumstances, I hate him for selling her to me – again. Even now. And he knows it. He gives a sad smile as he goes to get his coat. ‘No sign of any mice, anyway.’
*
As I latch Joe on to my breast for the umpteenth time tonight, I close my eyes and surrender to the soft sexual charge of his gentle bite, suckling on my nipples. I try not to think about Elwyn, but I can’t help myself. The comfort of someone would be nice, the fleecy familiarity of a body to press into once the lights die down. Somebody to do this with. I’m thinking of that as I drift down and under. The privilege of solitude isn’t for me.
28
The midwife appears at my door. Two teacup-sized patches of damp on my t-shirt greet her like a second set of eyes. I start to apologise but she shrugs it off with a flapping hand as she steps inside, her deep voice and Dublin accent at odds with her elfin frame.
‘Ach, you think I haven’t done worse meself? Answered the door to the postman once with me tit out – pure forgot!’ Her name is Adele, a woman whose eyes are accustomed to laughter. There’s something instantly reassuring about her, one of those people you just believe. ‘Fifth time lucky, hey?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Four times I’ve called round; and the health visitor too.’
‘Oh. Sorry. We must have been out walking. He seems to like it, the fresh air.’
I offer her a cup of tea. She declines with another smile.
‘Sure, you’ve time to go rambling and make cups of tea? Who are you – Wonder Woman?’
I take her coat, show her through to the living room. Lying in the midst of the twice-bagged nappies, the rubber gloves, the Dettol and the other cleaning paraphernalia sits a big, fat motherhood manual. All through my pregnancy it lay untouched, unread – a gift from Jan that I kept as a little joke to myself, a reminder of the cult of motherhood. But in the wee small hours, with Joe fretting at my breast, I flicked through it in the desperate hope that it might offer up some answers, anything. Anything that might drag Joe and I back from this dark, narrow tunnel of no return. I catch Adele eyeing the manual and kick it out of sight, as though she’s reading my thoughts. I wonder what I must look like – frightful, crazy, deranged? I can feel those black rings of woe splayed around my bulbous eyeballs. I know my hair is all over the place. I know that I look what I am – a woman on t
he edge, sinking. I apologise again, this time for the mess, but only for the sake of saying something. Adele laughs and shakes her head.
‘Jesus Christ, woman! You want to see ours! This is a palace compared to my madhouse.’ She checks me over; takes my blood pressure, inspects my calves and ankles. ‘Sure, you’re doing fine,’ she purrs, none too convincingly. ‘Now then. Where is he?’ Her eyes are sparkling, and I just stand there, smiling back at her like a simpleton. ‘Darling? No offence, but I’ve been dying to see the little fella close up since I saw the pair of yous in the Tesco.’
‘You saw us?’
‘You don’t remember?’ Adele goes to say something but just steps over, gives me a little hug and another knowing grin. ‘Come on, lovely! Where you hiding him?’
I nod towards the bedroom.
‘He’s sleeping,’ I say.
She claps her hands together.
‘Good for you, Joseph!’ She fixes me with one of her funny little looks and gives me a gentle poke in the midriff. ‘And good for Mummy!’ There’s something staged about this Little Miss Sunshine act. I know she’s trying to normalise all my anxieties, but there’s more to this – I can sense it. ‘Sleep for the new mother is everything in these first few weeks and months.’ Her eyes go wide and the twinkle is replaced by something harder. ‘It’s everything, Rachel, love.’
‘Yes. I know.’
I can’t iron out the ennui in my voice. She’s on it in a flash.
‘You are getting some sleep in? Yes?’
I try to keep it in. I can’t help myself.
‘No. Not really, no.’
‘What?’ She flashes a smile, but her face is suddenly pinched, fearful. ‘How not really is “not really”?’
And then it all comes tumbling out in a torrent of bitter self-pity. I can hear my voice, metallic, grating, angry – but it’s like someone else is talking.
‘He hardly sleeps at all! He’s only doing this to fool you, he’ll be up, crying, crying, crying, the moment you’re gone.’
The end of the outburst is lost in a fitful billow of sobs and Adele – efficiently, without great sympathy – pulls my head down to her shoulder and pats my back.
‘There now . . . his night and day are all mixed up, lovely, that’s all. He’ll settle soon enough, just you see. Sure he will.’
I manage to force a smile.
She mugs up one of those ‘who’d be a mum?’ faces, all wide eyes and benign befuddlement. ‘Now. Listen to me. Yes? Forget the housework. To hell with getting down the gym and getting your figure back and whatever nonsense you young ones heap on yourselves these days . . .’ I start to protest that the idea of aerobics or spinning or any kind of group exercise in a gymnasium is as far removed from my frame of normality as anything she could ever have dreamt up. But she talks and carries on talking until I shut up. ‘Just sleep when he does. Yes? The moment the little bugger closes his eyes, get your head down, too. It’s the only way you’ll get through these next few months. I’m not going to shit you, Rachel. Going through this – it’s like a tunnel, this is; it’s like doing time.’ She stands back, looks me in the eye and squeezes my shoulders once, twice, for emphasis. ‘But we get through it. I promise you, we get there. We do.’ It sounds as though she’s trying to convince herself. She claps her hands together. ‘So. Where is the little monster?’
‘Oh, yeah . . . of course. He’s just upstairs, in my bedroom. I’ll, er, I’ll just put the kettle on anyway, I think.’
She’s up there a while and the longer she stays, the more I’m flattened by a dire foreboding. I just know something’s wrong. But before my blackening psyche can dredge up the worst imaginable, Adele’s back in front of me, carrying Joe who is naked. Her expression is concerned, but gentle. There’s no accusatory tone as she points to the bruising on his thighs and at the top of his dimpled arms.
‘Did you happen to notice when these came at all, darling?’
But she’s not asking me that. She’s asking me when he got them. No – she’s asking me if I did it. I know she is. And I don’t know. I really, truly could not tell her how those bruises got there. As soon as Dad left last night, I winded Joe and he sicked up a little trail of gruel. I washed him down with a flannel, then I put him to bed. There were no marks on him then. Nothing that stood out. But I don’t remember, in truth. I was tired. I was so tired.
Adele reads my thoughts, and the reassuring twinkle is back.
‘Ach, it could be any number of things, darling. Really. But if Baby is susceptible to bruising, it’s something we’ll want to keep an eye on. Obviously.’ She’s scribbling on a pad with the Pfizer logo, still talking as she writes. ‘Now then, make an appointment at the clinic. Tell them I’m referring you – all my details are right here – and let’s just get a second opinion.’ The sing-song peal is well and truly back in her voice now. ‘See what the experts think, hey?’ She gives me a little wink as she tears off the sheet and hands it to me. ‘Probably nothing, but our job is to make sure, hey?’
She lets herself out. I stand at the window with little Joe, and watch her to the end of the path and out on to Belvidere Road. The sky is the colour of pewter. Adele gets into her car, removes her parking disc from the dashboard and glances up at my flat before pulling away.
29
Just beyond the café where the meeting is taking place there’s a lonely, little-used playground. Ruben and I used to go there sometimes. We fucked on the slide one evening, the sheet of metal so stinging cold that it dappled my legs to bruises. I didn’t mind a bit. I loved it, being alive like that. The risk. The thrill.
It’s still there, the slide – this must be the only playground in Liverpool to miss out on its safety-first upgrade. The tarmac is full of craters, the swings and roundabout rusting, near abandoned. Also still there is a faint, weather-worn inscription on the little flat platform at the top of the slide’s steps.
Rube ’n Rachel
I know it’s still there because I come here, often. I remember (how could I forget?) Ruben scratching our names into the steel with his paring knife. I’d read so much into those words at the time; they plastered over some of the needy gaps and silences I yearned to fill with plans and promises. I lift Joe from his buggy and hold him up to his father’s handiwork, but a wave of unease washes through me and I step away. I just stand there, with Joe dangling from my arms.
‘Your daddy, Joe-bo. Your aul’ fella.’
I’d swear Joe smiles at me. He’s just hanging there, waiting for me to do with him whatever I’ll do next, but I’m certain he is looking at me; can see me. As we leave the park and push on towards the café, I wonder what I’ll tell Joe about Ruben when he’s a big boy; if I’ll tell him the truth or if I’ll ever find the courage to even tell him about his dad at all.
I drop back and watch the other mothers filing in. The invitation came out of the blue, and I’m both surprised and impressed that they’ve got their act together and followed through. In the madness of life post-birth I’ve barely given the NCT group a thought, let alone our fevered pledges to meet up with our babies. The email unsettled me initially; a little too refreshed and upbeat for my liking, and too many fucking exclamation marks!!! Until I hauled my arse, my baby and the buggy in through these jaunty yellow gates, I severely doubted I’d come at all. But here I am, girls. Rachel’s here!
From the number of black four-wheel drives crunching in on the gravel and spinning to a dramatic stop, I’m starting to feel I’ve missed out on some dress code. Everyone seems to have the same car – if you can call these monster-trucks cars. Immaculate young mothers jump down from their steeds, all hairspray and lustrous locks, their slim, slightly faded jeans cupping their small bottoms. Some of them are near-dancing down the path in pairs, already firm allies, their laughter oozing self-confidence, self-belief. They walk like they know where they’re going; what lies behind the door.
I steady myself, smile down at Joe and step out from the shadows, start making my
way towards the café’s glass façade. As I get closer, one woman stands out among the gather of well-groomed mum-chicks. Her hair is wild, her face shock white. Instinctively I make a beeline for her, but as I get closer to the plate-glass window I realise the woman is me.
This is a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. All this will do is serve up my uselessness, my failings as a mother, lay it all bare to an audience of supermums. No. I’ve done well to get this far, but I should just turn around now and walk away. Nobody has seen me. I carry on round the side of the café – there’s another gate leading out on to the river path. I can make my getaway and take Joe on a bracing riverside romp instead. But as I get round the back of the café and on to the path, there’s a familiar face coming towards me. Vicky. My expression is immediately guilty for having left her in the rain that afternoon, but if she did see me duck back behind the shadows then lope off up to my flat, she doesn’t let on.
‘You too?’ she smiles.
I nod. I like her. She looks dishevelled and . . . well, she looks mad. There’s tomato sauce or maybe raspberry juice around her mouth and a perfectly circular stain of vomit on her raincoat’s lapel, like a brooch. To the left of the stain is her tiny baby, fast asleep in a sling. Vicky’s next to me now, smiling mischievously.
‘I was just about to do one myself,’ she grins. She’s got a very slight, girlish Liverpool accent. ‘And it felt great. I felt dead . . . naughty, sneaking off like that. Then I just thought – who you kidding? Sometimes you’ve got to make yourself do things you don’t want to, haven’t you?’
‘Have you?’
Any sign of encouragement and I’m off. Vicky thinks about it.
‘Don’t get me wrong. They’re a lovely bunch of girls and that . . .’
‘But?’
Again the impish grin. Her nose wrinkles as she shrinks her head down inside her raincoat.
‘I’m just not sure I want to sit there hearing how brilliant other women’s babies are? Do you know what I mean?’
Do I know what she means? I could hug her!
