The meeting was held in a suite of rooms in a perfectly respectable middle-rank hotel off Gower Street. There were perhaps seventy people there. He wasn’t actually seated next to Annet – there was an empty seat in between them occasioned by a no-show – but they exchanged a few pleasantly ironic asides during the rather dull first half, stood together in the queue for coffee and biscuits in the interval and introduced themselves. She was dark and intense, a little on the thin side, with good legs and a ramrod-straight back. In the meeting she’d paid close attention, but did not clap when everyone else did. His first impressions were that she might be either a journalist or perhaps a political animal of some sort. Strikingly attractive, not his usual sort. As they drank their coffee near a window (so that she could smoke) he offered, by way of trade, his own reasons for being there.
‘I’m a patron of this charity, but to my shame I’ve never been to one of these before.’
‘No shame in that.’ She shrugged one shoulder. ‘It’s your money they’re after.’
‘Perfectly correct, but it’s only sensible to acquaint oneself with where the money’s going.’
‘True.’ She cast him a tough oblique look which he would soon recognise was typical of her. ‘And are you any the wiser?’
He laughed. Even then he was acutely, almost embarrassingly, smitten. ‘ I shall be, when I’ve read the bumf.’
‘Dream on,’ was her comment.
‘You’re very cynical.’
She put her cup down on the windowsill. ‘Yup.’
‘May I ask why? I think we should be told.’
In answer she put another question. ‘That bumf you place so much faith in, all that glossy colour printing, how do you think it’s funded?’
‘Fair point, but surely there are bound to be running costs in any organisation …?’
‘If this lot were directors of a company you’d say they were creaming the profits.’
He smiled to show that what he was about to say wasn’t personal: ‘You seem to be making quite a serious allegation.’ Another small shrug, but he determined not to let her off the hook. ‘Do you know something the rest of us don’t?’
‘The company I represent have supported this outfit till now.’
‘But you’re thinking of withdrawing that support?’
Another cowboy look. ‘We might be.’
He was amused by what seemed to him to be her faux poker face, and yet there seemed to be a real coolness there too – a learned behaviour on top of an inherent quality. She was like a bright, shiny stone, complete in itself.
‘I can understand,’ he said, ‘why a company would want to feel that its donations were being well spent, but it would hardly seem worth my withdrawing my support of a few pounds a year given for highly idiosyncratic reasons. In fact it would seem unnecessarily grand. Unless of course we’re talking fraud on a massive scale.’
He allowed this suggestion to hang in the air between them, for her to take hold of or ignore as she chose. She blew it away with her last mouthful of smoke, and stubbed out her cigarette in her saucer. ‘No, no, no … Just rank incompetence. No one’ll be called to account for it except the poor bloody homeless.’
David could almost feel his wrist stinging, a sensation which he found nicely combined pleasure and pain. And it was at some point in this conversation that he essayed an ‘Annette’, thinking, because it was familiar, that that was what he had heard, and she broke in on his subsequent remark to correct him: ‘ No, it’s Annet – like dammit.’
At the end of the AGM he asked her if she would join him for a drink, but she declared, without hesitation or glancing at her watch, that she was afraid she couldn’t. No excuse or reason was offered, but perhaps inspired by her example he was equally direct.
‘Another time then? You could rattle a few more of my innocent assumptions.’
For the first time she’d laughed in a way that told him he’d got through.
‘All right – end of the week after work?’
By the time he met her again he already suspected he was in love with her, but would have to play a canny waiting game if he were to stand any chance at all. He was reminded of the words of a song: ‘The difficult I’ll do right now, the impossible may take a little while.…’
There was Seth, for a start, whose presence he learned about in the wine bar where they shared a bottle, and the price, of a recherché red far more expensive than anything he’d have chosen himself.
Seth was introduced into the conversation simply as ‘the person I share with’, so he allowed his interpretation the latitude he felt it deserved. This was jolted slightly when Seth himself, a cord-trousered academic journalist in his twenties, arrived an hour later for what was obviously a prearranged supper date and was greeted with a kiss on the lips. David watched them go with a sinking heart, and had been hugely surprised and gratified to receive, a fortnight later, a scribbled invitation to another drink with Annet so that in her words she could say ‘I told you so’.
Over this second meeting, which they rounded off with a Thai curry, he began to gain a correct perspective on Seth. Seth was Springboard Man. In fact it would not have been too much, or too unfair to say that Seth was one of Nature’s Springboard Men. From everything Annet said it was clear that they had been together in a low-wattage kind of way for several years, during which time she had outstripped and outgrown him. Just the same, David couldn’t help but feel a certain fraternal sympathy with Seth, and would not have presumed to move things on had not Annet said casually but clearly, that she was in the process of looking for a flat to buy on her own.
Three months later when his whole life had changed and they had bought the house in West Hampstead which preceded the one in Newton Bury, she had told him in bed one night that the decision to acquire the separate flat had been made as she opened her mouth to speak.
It was the closest she ever came to saying she’d fallen in love with him, and it was lucky it was night, because he wept. Her head, dark and mysterious-smelling, was tucked beneath his chin, so she never knew.
Chapter Three
They had a plan, of course, because Annet always did. They were to have a week at home together between the baby’s arrival and David’s return to work; and a few weeks later, when Annet went back, he would have a week looking after the baby on his own before the New Zealand nanny arrived.
While he agreed wholeheartedly with his wife’s analysis that being a full-time father for a few days would provide not only useful experience but also a sound frame of reference by which to judge Lara the Kiwi (whom Annet had taken on unilaterally), David was more fearful about this undertaking than he cared to let on.
He eventually moved to confide in Tim when he and Mags came up for the day on the Sunday after Annet got back. It wasn’t something he’d wanted to do, being slightly fed up with Tim’s been-there-done-that attitude to child-rearing, on the other hand they found themselves alone together in the kitchen after lunch, charged with stacking the dishwasher while the baby fed, and the opportunity presented itself.
‘She’s great,’ Tim said generously. ‘ We’ll let you keep that one.’
‘Thanks. Yes, we think so.’
‘Giving much gyp generally? I mean you can speak freely now.’
David added detergent and closed the door of the machine. ‘A bit – I don’t know. I don’t have a yardstick.’
‘Just as well.’ Tim picked a bit off the cold chicken, stuffed it in his mouth and wiped his ringers on a tea towel. ‘So when do you get her christened?’
‘I don’t know.’ David hoped not to be pressed on this one, a mild bone of contention between him and Annet.
‘More to the point, what will you get her christened?’
‘We’re not sure about that either. Annet’s drawn up a short list.’
‘Give us a clue.’
‘We both quite like Freya.…’
‘Different,’ conceded Tim, ‘without being embarrassing. Go fo
r it.’
David pulled out a chair. ‘Tim—?’
‘Yup!’
‘Take a pew why don’t you.’
‘That can be arranged.’ Tim swung the chair round and sat on it back to front, an attitude which for some nameless reason David found disheartening. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Nothing in particular. It’s just we don’t often get an opportunity to talk like this.’
‘Don’t we? Like what?’
David suspected that if he wanted to hang on to any dignity at all he mustn’t be drawn into the arena of what constituted Big Talk. Instead, he tried to make his question sound as if it sprang from simple man-to-man curiosity. ‘I’d be fascinated to know just how confident you were with your first. With Josie.’
‘With Jose? Christ, not at all, I was the original hapless, hopeless male. I wanted the whole thing to go away if you must know. If we could have had the film rewound so that she went straight back where she came from I’d have pressed the button myself.’
David was suddenly reminded of times when their mother had soothed a boyhood argument with the assertion ‘You love each other really …’ Perhaps they really did. ‘Yes, but Tim, were you able – to manage on your own?’
Tim frowned quizzically. ‘Sorry, bro, you’ve lost me.’
David tried hard not to sound exasperated. ‘Were you able to look after her on your own when occasion demanded?’
‘I suppose so. Just about, when I had to, which wasn’t often. It didn’t involve much, if memory serves me. Mainly ongoing surveillance at that age.’
David considered the tenor of his domestic life over the past few days in the light of this observation. ‘A bit more than that, surely.’
‘Certain amount of disturbance, I grant you. Anyway, why? Is Annet planning to shove you into the front line so soon?’
‘We agreed that I’d stay at home to look after the baby for a while when she started work again. Before and until the nanny arrives.’
‘Sort of induction session.’
‘No,’ said David firmly, not to be sloppily traduced, ‘this is the induction session. That will be ops in the field.’
‘Point taken. You’ll be fine.’
‘You think? I’m assured she’ll be on the bottle by then.’
‘She may not be the only one.’ Tim snorted briefly. ‘Sorry, someone had to say it.’
And it had be you, thought David.
‘You’ll be fine, bro,’ said Tim again. ‘It’s all common sense. Just look at the people who do it and then ask yourself, how hard can it be?’
David didn’t care to let on that he’d hoped Tim would answer this question in full; nor that the contemplation of other more disadvantaged but perfectly successful parents only increased his sense of inadequacy. He did however take some comfort from what had passed between them, especially his brother’s generous admission of his own incompetence with Josie. At least something of value had happened between the two of them. He just hoped that Tim would see it in the same light, and treat the exchange with the discretion and gentleness it deserved. He could almost hear Tim saying jovially to Mags before they’d even hit the main road, ‘Poor old David, he’s going to be on solo fathering fatigues and he’s scared shitless.…’
Perhaps it was this that made him say boldly, as they rejoined their wives.
‘Right, we’ve been talking and we think she should be called Freya.’
‘OK,’ said Annet. ‘Suits me.’
There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Mags was one of the kindest women imaginable, a good sort who would give you the shirt off her back and the food off her plate if need be, but this did not alter the fact that she was a summa cum laude graduate in getting up noses.
Generally speaking Annet could afford to be tolerant, since she reasoned that Mags had the sort of life that she would pay a king’s ransom to avoid. But today, with the roles temporarily reversed, there was no hiding place. With the men loading the washing machine, and the baby latched on as though this feed were her last, there was no option but to grit her teeth and take her medicine like a man.
‘How are you finding the breastfeeding?’ asked Mags.
‘She seems to be getting something.’
‘Oh, definitely,’ agreed Mags. ‘ Regained her birthweight?’
‘So I understand,’ said Annet.
‘The midwife’s been round, I take it …?’ Mags smiled brightly to show that this was a purely casual enquiry and nothing to do with checking things were being done properly. ‘With her infernal machine?’
‘Yes. Twice.’
‘One sort of resents it, but it’s also a comfort, don’t you think?’
Annet shrugged. ‘I don’t resent it. They’re the experts.’
‘Now there I beg to differ.’ Mags bridled. ‘You’re the expert on your own baby – never forget that.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘There’s so much advice about these days, so much so-called expert opinion on what ought to be perfectly natural common-sense things, we’re in danger of losing our instincts.’
‘I think,’ said Annet, ‘that instinct is overrated.’
‘Ah! There speaks the modern woman.’
Annet felt her blood beginning to heat rapidly. ‘I certainly hope so.’
‘No, I mean we’re all modern women, but that is a very typical modern anxiety.’
‘It’s not an anxiety, it’s a fact. If we were all dependent on some atavistic, earth-mother set of instincts we’d still be out hunting in packs while the alpha male lounged under a tree.’ She realised at once that she’d played into Mags’s hands. ‘Annet
– have you been to Tesco’s on a Friday?’
Fortunately for Mags’s health and the baby’s digestion the men
walked in at this point, and David said:
‘Right, we’ve been talking and we think she should be called
Freya.’
Out of relief, she agreed.
A walk was decided upon and they loaded Freya into her backpack, and the backpack on to David. It was the first time they’d used this particular piece of equipment and Mags commented quietly that it was not what she’d have chosen.
‘And why’s that?’ asked Annet, who was standing behind David struggling with the fastenings. She spoke in a tone intended to repulse a detailed answer.
‘Need you ask?’ Mags smiled ruefully. ‘Too complicated.’
‘It’s not actually,’ said David over his shoulder. ‘We’re just a bit new to it, like everything else.’
‘This is but the test drive,’ agreed Tim. ‘Can I help?’
David was glad he couldn’t see Annet’s face at this point, but equally glad when Tim’s intervention proved successful.
They set off on the easiest of the bridleways that led out of the village, on to the gentle billow of the arable land to the south. It was one of those fine, wind-blown late summer afternoons with high cloud and a long view and the merest teasing hint of autumn in the air. Most of the fields had been harvested but not yet ploughed, so what with that and the set-aside they were soon able to leave the bridleway and take a less-used footpath that afforded a good view of the church spire, sheltered housing, Grade II listed buildings, sympathetic council development and assorted roofs and aerials of Newton Bury.
‘It’s nice round here,’ declared Mags indulgently, perhaps aware of having pushed her luck earlier. ‘Not as picturesque as our part of the world, but much less occupied. More real, in a way.’
‘Being dastardly commuters I’m not sure we’re qualified to comment,’ said David, ‘but we like it.’
‘I don’t see Annet rearing marrows and making featherlight sponges for the annual show!’ agreed Tim jovially, placing as he did so a pally – and David thought somewhat ill-judged – hand on Annet’s shoulder. But as with the business of the name, she seemed too distracted, or more likely too bone-tired to brush him off, and replied instead:
‘Er – no. Bu
t I did go along to that palsied parish meeting and kick up a bit of a stink about the parking near the shop.’
Tim raised an eyebrow at David, who confirmed: ‘She did.’
‘Poor sods.’
‘To good effect?’ asked Mags.
Annet pulled a wry face. ‘ My comments were noted.’
‘I bet they bloody were,’ said Tim. ‘Which way, chief?’
They’d reached the top of a rise and were confronted with a variety of choices.
‘We’ve got a short circuit, a long circuit, or a straight out and back,’ replied David. ‘Short circuit’s about a mile, long one’s about two and a half, the out-and-back is however long you want to make it.’
‘Out and back thanks,’ said Mags, ‘then I can turn for home when it suits me and the rest of you can strike out for the horizon.’
‘Please,’ said Annet, ‘forget it. I shan’t be doing any striking out.’
‘That’s decided then.’ Tim made a grand pointing gesture. ‘Wagons roll!’
They set out along the chalky cart track and fell into twos, the men at a slightly quicker pace in front, the women bringing up the rear. Far to their left a combine harvester churned through a few remaining acres of wheat in a nimbus of greyish dust and chaff. It was far enough away not to be heard, but every so often when the fluttering wind dropped for a second they caught the distant growl of its engine.
‘So,’ said Mags, approaching her favourite subject from a different angle. ‘David seems every inch the proud father.’
Annet grappled with this. ‘ Does he?’
‘It’s really lovely to see – I’d say at his age, but it’s not as if he’s that much older than the rest of us—’
‘But old to be a first-time father,’ supplied Annet, ‘yup?’
‘Yes. Sweet,’ added Mags with an appropriate moue.
‘And I’m a bit of an elderly party in those terms as well.’
‘Well, I don’t know, women have so many more options now, and more and more of them seem to be waiting until they’ve done whatever it is they want to do with their lives before starting a family.’
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