The Chinese Egg

by Catherine Storr

  She didn’t wake until two hours later, when Mr. Bodman, who rented the front ground floor, came up early to the toilet and was astonished and aghast at finding her there. She’d never thought to lock the door.

  Sixteen

  Maureen managed to get back into the bedroom without waking either the baby or Skinner. She eased the baby back into its cot and got into the bed, where she slept until after eleven o’clock.

  It was the baby who woke them again. Skinner just said a bad word and went off to the bathroom. At least it was light and Maureen felt better for the sleep she’d had. Before Skinner got back she’d dressed herself and changed the baby. Then she went out on the landing where the cooker stood, to warm up the baby’s feed.

  Mrs. Plum came up the stairs, stout and jolly in a quilted nylon housecoat, very brightly coloured. She must have heard the baby crying and had come to see if she could help. She was kind, Mrs. Plum, only she was. nosey too, and Skinner had warned Maureen not to talk to her.

  “If she starts talking to me, I can’t just not say anything,” Maureen had said.

  “‘Course you’ve got to answer. Only don’t tell her anything, see? About us and the kid.”

  “She asks. She asked me where I had the baby.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Said I’d had it in the hospital.”

  “That’s all right. Only don’t tell her anything like how bad it was having it or that sort of stuff. You’d get it wrong and she’s the sort of old bag who’d know. She ask any more?”

  Maureen lied. She’d learned to lie much better since she’d known Skinner. “No.” She wouldn’t tell him about the wedding she’d made up for Mrs. Plum. The sort of wedding she’d have liked, in a church with flowers and her all in white with a big bouquet sort of dropping on one arm and everyone dressed in their best, clapping and hoping she’d be happy. If she told Skinner that, he’d look at her with his eyes half shut the way he did when he was going to be angry, and he’d say, “You’re useless.” Useless was what he called her when she’d done something wrong.

  “Morning, Mrs. Deptford!” Mrs. Plum said now, panting slightly from climbing the stairs.

  “Morning,” Maureen said politely.

  “I’m afraid you and your hubby can’t have had much of a night. I heard Linda crying ever such a lot,” Mrs. Plum said. She had to raise her voice to get across the wails of the hungry baby.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right, dear. We’ve all been through it in our time. I know. My Stuart, he was ever such a difficult baby, I used to think I’d never get a good night’s sleep again in the first months, I really did.”

  “How long was it before he got better?” Maureen asked. Perhaps the baby would stop crying half the night soon and she’d be able to sleep and Skinner wouldn’t be so cross.

  “I can’t remember that, dear. Seemed like years, but I daresay it wasn’t more than a few months. By the time he was a year I know he was ever such a good baby, you’d hardly know he was in the house. I daresay your Linda’ll settle down in time. Let’s see. You said she was three months, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s in a proper paddy now, isn’t she? When did she have her last feed, then?” Mrs. Plum shouted above the baby’s cries of rage.

  “Last night before we went to bed.”

  “You mean you didn’t feed her this morning? When I heard her stop crying, I thought, There now. That poor Mrs. Deptford’s got up and made a feed and put the little girlie back to bed all warm and full up and comfy. You mean you didn’t give her anything this morning till now?”

  “No. I didn’t. . . .”

  “Not even a drop of water in case she was thirsty, the poor little mite?”

  “No. I didn’t. . . .”

  “Didn’t they teach you that at the hospital?”

  “Not water. Just to make up the stuff and warm the bottles and to give it to her at the times. . . you know.”

  “What I say is, it seems funny all these hospitals and clinics and everything saying different things from each other. What I say is, there must be a right and a wrong way, mustn’t there? They can’t all be right. So why don’t they make up their minds and have it said the same, once and for all. At the Royal Free, now, they were all for the mothers feeding the babies themselves. Not bottles. You know what I mean. . .?” She paused delicately. Maureen stared at her, then said in a hurry, “I know.”

  “Didn’t the hospital say anything about you putting the baby on bottles? Or perhaps you did feed her yourself at the beginning? You look as if you should have been able to. . . .” Her eyes sized up Maureen’s shapes and Maureen felt herself going red. “Didn’t they tell you you ought to?”

  Maureen said quickly, “No. They didn’t mind. They said bottles would be all right.”

  “There! You see? Can’t make up their minds between themselves. No wonder half the girls come out of hospital without knowing one end of their baby from the other. Did they show you how to bath her before you left?”

  It seemed easiest to say, “No.”

  “I never! That’s a shame. But I expect you had your Mum or someone to help you out when you got back home with her, didn’t you?”

  Maureen hated being asked about her Mum, it always made her cry. Silly. Because it was four years ago, and you’d think she’d have got over it by now. And it wasn’t as if they’d got on all that well, especially that last year, they’d had ever such rows. Boys and clothes and make-up and smoking and school and everything. But she still couldn’t answer. She found a handkerchief in the pocket of her coat and blew her nose.

  “Have you caught a cold, dear? Perhaps your little Linda, she’s caught it off of you and that’s what makes her cry such a lot. Hadn’t you better take her along to the clinic next week and see if the doctor can’t give you something to help clear her little chest? Which clinic was you attending before you moved here?”

  “I can’t remember its name.”

  “Well, where were you and your hubby before you came to me, then? I think you did say, only I didn’t quite catch. Your hubby speaks very quiet sometimes.”

  Maureen was thankful she’d been told the answer to this. “We come here from Birmingham. Sk. . . Johnny got offered a job.”

  “I’ve got a sister living there in one of those new council flats. Where did you say you lived? It might have been near my sister’s place, then I might know it.”

  Pushed, and unable to invent, Maureen said the name of the street she’d lived in all her life in London. “Brady Drive.”

  “Brady Drive. No, I don’t know that at all. Which side of the town is it then?”

  Maureen could hear the bathroom door slam. Skinner would be coming down the stairs, he mustn’t find her and Mrs. Plum talking, he’d be sure to ask how much she’d said. She said, “I think the water’s hot enough now, I’ll give the baby her feed.” She heard Skinner’s feet coming down the stairs.

  “You’d best cool it down a bit before you let her have the bottle. If you give it to her that hot she’ll burn her little tongue,” Mrs. Plum said. She pulled her bright housecoat together across her front and turned to greet Skinner. “I was just saying to Mrs. Deptford, Mr. Deptford, that I’m afraid you can’t have had a very good night what with your little Linda taking on so this morning.”

  Skinner could smile when he wanted to so that he looked really nice, really as if he liked you. He’d done that to Maureen when they’d first gone out together. He smiled like that at Mrs. Plum now and said that no, he wasn’t feeling too bad now he’d had a wash and brush up, but he was sorry if Linda had disturbed Mrs. Plum or anyone else in the house. Then he cut short what Mrs. Plum was going to say, which would have been the same all over again that she’d said before, and he said to Maureen, very polite, that she’d better get on and feed Linda, hadn’t she, to stop her crying any more. So Maureen took the pan with the hot water and the bottle into the bedroom. She heard Skinner outside t
elling Mrs. Plum that they were going out to see some friends and that, yes, it was cold for the time of year. Then he came in and shut the door behind him. Maureen was sitting on the side of the bed with the baby on one arm and the bottle in her other hand. The baby was screaming. Of course.

  “Go on. Give the bloody kid its feed and get it to stop that row,” Skinner said, speaking quite differently from how he had in front of Mrs. Plum. He was almost whispering too, and some-how it made it sound worse. More frightening.

  “I don’t want to give it to her too hot,” Maureen whispered back.

  “For Christ’s sake! Why’d you hot it up so much then?” They couldn’t carry on a conversation in whispers against the noise the baby was making. When at last the bottle had cooled down and the baby was making greedy sucking noises, Skinner asked, “What did the old cow want to know this time?”

  “Only about the baby. How old she was and that.”

  “You didn’t say anything out of step?”

  Lies again. “No, Skinner. Honest I didn’t. I said we’d come from Birmingham like you told me.”

  He frowned. “Why did you have to say anything about where we come from?”

  “She asked. She was going on about clinics. Wanted to know where I took the baby to. I didn’t know about clinics. You didn’t tell me about them, only about hospital.”

  “Jesus! Don’t you know anything? Baby clinics. You’re supposed to take the kid there to be weighed and that. It said in the book. I read it to you. Don’t you remember?”

  She didn’t, but to distract his attention she said, “What does it say in the book about water? She wanted to know why I didn’t give her water in the night.”

  Skinner said, “I’ll see.” All the instructions that Maureen had had about infant care had come out of the book and had been given her by Skinner. He had shown her how to mix the feeds with water in a measured jug and how to pour the mixture into bottles which you then warmed up in a pan of water. He’d told Maureen what to buy in the way of nappies and macintosh pants. He hadn’t shown her how to change the baby because he wouldn’t touch it himself. He was funny like that. He wouldn’t even pick it up, it always had to be her. He’d shown her the picture in the book of the right way to put on the nappy and he’d shown her too the picture of the way to hold a baby in its bath, but Maureen was frightened. She hadn’t bathed the baby yet once. She’d given it a wash where it most needed it, but she was hoping that before the baby really had to be bathed, they’d have got rid of it.

  Thinking hopefully how soon this might be, she said, “Are we taking her back today?”

  “Back where?”

  “Back to her Mum and Dad.”

  He looked up from the book and said, “You’re crazy. Without the money? What’d be the point?”

  “I thought someone was going to ask for the money yesterday.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wouldn’t they give it to us, then?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Some time they will?”

  “‘Course they will. Takes time, though. They got to get anxious.” Maureen thought about this. “Aren’t they anxious?”

  “Not anxious enough. Just now they’d cheat. Bring the law in. We got to have the cash clear, without any strings. See? For that we got to wait a bit. So they don’t know what’s going on, so they’d do anything to know the kid’s all right.”

  “How long do you think that’ll be?”

  Skinner’s mouth turned up at the corners, only it wasn’t really a smile with his eyes like that. He said, “Might be a day or two, might be a week. Don’t know yet how quickly they’ll soften up.”

  “We going to stay here, then?”

  “For a bit. If nothing goes wrong.”

  “Like what?”

  Skinner didn’t answer.

  “If what goes wrong, Skinner?”

  “If the old bag gets too nosey. Or you say something out of turn. Or Smithy says to move on.”

  “Who’s Smithy?”

  “Smithy’s the boss.”

  “What’s he the boss of, Skinner?” Maureen asked, not really much bothered to know, but wanting to keep him there talking while the baby got the last drops out of the bottle, her eyelids already dropping as if in another minute she’d be asleep. Skinner stubbed out his cigarette. He was a chain smoker, he’d already got the next one in the corner of his mouth. He said, “Smithy works our lot. Bus and Ted and Jakey and me.”

  “You mean he tells you what to do?”

  She ought to have known that was the wrong thing to say to Skinner. He scowled. “Not like that. He’s got the contacts, see? We work for him in a way. He looks after us, see? He sees we’re all right. See?”

  Maureen didn’t. She said, “I always thought you were the boss.”

  “Don’t let Jakey hear you say that.”

  “I don’t like Jakey,” Maureen said.

  “Anything special?”

  “He’s cruel. I saw him kicking that dog the other night. He went on and on. He went on as if he liked doing it. There wasn’t any need. . . .”

  Skinner said, “Jakey’s quite a boy.”

  “Did he—Smithy—say to take the baby?”

  “That’s right. He got it all worked out. When it’d be best to do it and that. How much to ask for. All that sort of thing, he knows. He’s sharp. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be where he is now.”

  Maureen put the empty bottle on the bed. The baby seemed to be asleep.

  “Skinner!”

  “What?”

  “How’ll you know when it’s safe to take her back? I mean, how’ll you know her Mum and Dad will pay the money and not tell the police or anything?”

  “We’ll know, don’t worry. Smithy reckons she’ll break first. The kid’s Mum. She’ll be the one to say yes, she’ll pay up and no business with the cops or marked notes or anything. He’ll pull it off, old Smithy will. He knows just when to start being tough. He’ll say when we ought to begin saying pay up or else. . . .”

  “Or else what?”

  “I don’t suppose Mrs. Bloody Wilmington would like to think her precious little baby might just possibly never come back. She’d do a lot to be sure she got her back in one piece, I reckon. That’s when we get the money and she gets her rotten howling kid back.”

  “What d’you mean, in one piece?”

  “Look, Fatty, I know you’re dim, but you can’t be that useless. What d’you think’s going to happen if they won’t pay up? They will, mind you. But just suppose they don’t, you don’t really think they’re going to get away with it, do you?”

  “What’ll you do with her. . .?” Maureen whispered.

  “Don’t ask questions and you won’t get told nothing you don’t want to hear.”

  Maureen clutched the baby closer to her and saw Skinner through different, panicky eyes. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her!”

  “I haven’t said anyone’s going to hurt her. And you keep quiet or someone’ll hurt you for a change,” Skinner hissed. But it wasn’t much good telling Maureen to keep quiet. The baby, so rashly squeezed by Maureen in her fright, woke up and began to bellow again.

  Seventeen

  Maureen was frightened. When she’d first met Skinner she’d found him a bit scary. He didn’t talk much, often only answered Yes or No when you asked him something, sometimes didn’t answer at all. She discovered after a time that this wasn’t because he hadn’t heard, but because he didn’t mean to answer. He’d never told her his other name, for instance. She didn’t know whether Skinner was his first or last name. Now that he’d said to call him Johnny, she wondered if that was really what he was called. She’d asked but he hadn’t said. She didn’t know where he came from, whether he had a Mum and a Dad or brothers and sisters. She didn’t know what jobs he’d done, didn’t know what sort of job he was doing now. She’d been scared by Jakey when she’d met him and seen what he did to the poor little dog. He wouldn’t mind if he had to do something bad to
anyone, even a baby. She wouldn’t let herself really think what Skinner had meant when he’d said that about the baby going back in one piece to her Mum and Dad. Just remembering the way Skinner had said that made her feel a bit sick. Because though she was a nuisance, crying all the time, it wasn’t really the baby’s fault. And she, Maureen, was looking after her all right. It had been nice when she found she was right about that last bottle, that the baby was crying because she was hungry. If she had the baby a bit longer she’d probably get really good at knowing what she wanted and at keeping her quiet and that, and then Skinner’d be pleased with her and say, “Not bad,” when she asked him how she’d done. All the same Maureen did hope the baby’s Mum would get anxious quickly and say she’d pay over the money quite soon so that the whole thing could be over and done with and she could go back to being just Skinner’s girl-friend again.

  They went round to the pub on the corner for lunch, leaving the baby in the pushchair outside the door where they could keep an eye on her. Maureen thought how queer it would be if someone else pinched the baby again.

  Mrs. Plum bounced out of her kitchen door as they came back through the door.

  “There’s a young fellow been round here to see you. Said he was a friend of yours. I told him I didn’t know where you’d gone and I couldn’t say when you’d be back, so he said he’d wait around. He’s only been gone just a few minutes,” she said to Skinner.

  “I’ll go and see if I can see him anywhere,” he said. He looked at Maureen. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone,” he said. When other people said it, it was a joke, you laughed, but when Skinner said it, it was more like a threat. Maureen shivered.

  Mrs. Plum said, “Why don’t you come into the kitchen and keep me company for a bit? I’ve got the telly in there, you could watch that if you wanted. You wouldn’t be in my way if you wanted to stop there for half an hour or so.”

  It was warm in Mrs. Plum’s kitchen and tidy and clean. Maureen hadn’t been in a kitchen like this since. . . for years. Maureen wheeled the baby into it and she never stirred. Mrs. Plum turned on the telly and then she bustled round making cups of tea. The telly flickered, the kettle whistled, there was a comforting smell of roasted meat and stewed apple, and soap. Maureen sat in an old padded basket-chair that creaked every time she moved. Mrs. Plum was asking her questions. What sort of business was Mr. Deptford in? How long had she known him before they married? Did she know the boy who’d come round to see her husband? What sort of work had she done before she’d had the baby? Maureen tried to answer politely and carefully but it became more and more difficult. She knew she wouldn’t answer right if Mrs. Plum went on and she got more and more sleepy, and sure enough, when Mrs. Plum said suddenly, “Brady Drive! That was where you lived, wasn’t it?” Maureen said quickly, “No!”