Bad Behaviour

by Liz Byrski

  ‘You’re so clever, Rich, I’m so proud of you. You’ll win, I know you will,’ she’d said, crossing the room to kiss him.

  ‘We have to get shortlisted before we think about winning.’

  ‘You will. And I’m going to cheer my head off when they give you the award.’

  The memory was so clear, so poignant, that Richard began to cry; big wrenching sobs that made his already aching head pound. Although her reaction had pleased him, he remembered that he’d also felt it would have been worth more if it came from someone who really understood what he was doing. Now, struck down by sudden grief, he hated himself for his intellectual snobbery. In recent months, he had bitterly regretted the precipitate and very final action he had taken when the baby was born. Why hadn’t he waited, given himself time to cool down? He knew now that Zoë was the one person he wanted to share his good news with; the one person he wanted beside him at the awards if they won, and even more so if they didn’t.

  The last six months had been misery. When Julia returned to Paris and he moved back to the flat, he had staggered on from day to day, gritting his teeth and burying himself in his work. For the first time in his life, he was bitterly lonely. Everywhere he turned, he saw, heard or smelt Zoë, and every day he struggled to convert hurt and loneliness into an anger that would drive him and keep every other emotion at bay. But his hangover had pulled out all the stoppers.

  Richard tried to make coffee, but his hands shook so violently that coffee and water splattered across the draining board. Were these really his hands? He couldn’t even see straight and his eyes felt full of sand. His body must have aged at least twenty years overnight and his mouth bore more resemblance to the bottom of the chicken pen at Bramble Cottage than it did to anything human. He waited gloomily for the percolator to stop bubbling, and when he’d drunk his coffee he decided that a bath might help. Pulling off his clothes, he stood naked and shivering in the bathroom watching the water level rise and remembering Zoë calling him to help her get out of the bath.

  Half an hour later, washed and dressed, he was still shivering and although the crying had stopped, he wasn’t sure that it was really over. It was almost midday and he considered eating something – a greasy breakfast was supposed to be the antidote to a hangover, but the mere idea of eggs, bacon and sausages made his stomach heave.

  Shame was the worst part of it. The loss of Zoë and of the child he’d initially not wanted and then grown to anticipate with fierce excitement was one thing. But his shame, his disgust at himself, was the dark underbelly of his mood.

  The moment in which Richard had first seen the baby’s face was engraved on his memory; the harsh bright lights, the smell of blood and antiseptic, the tense and shadowy presence of the doctor and nurse, and the tiny round face of someone else’s child. The pain still ripped into his gut whenever he thought of it. He had pulled off the gown, thrown it on the floor, punched open the door of the delivery room and strode out along the corridor, down the stairs and into the street.

  Why hadn’t he realised what had been going on? Had everyone else known? Sandy? Charlie? That constantly shifting mob of people in the Kilburn house? Had they all been laughing at him? Stupid bastard; too dumb, too obsessed with his work to see what was going on under his nose.

  ‘It was only once, Richard, just one time,’ Zoë had insisted when he had finally forced himself to talk to her. ‘Just once. It was a stupid thing, it just happened. You were away and I was upset, I had too much to drink . . . it was stupid . . .’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Like I said – it just happened.’

  Was it his own guilt that had made him so self-righteous? Did his own shame make him want to humiliate her, banish her? When he learned she’d registered the baby under the name they had chosen together, he had been filled with a rage so overwhelming that he had thought himself capable of physical violence.

  ‘I picked that name,’ he’d shouted, and she had stared at him, tears running down her face.

  ‘I know, and all those months before he was born, that’s how I’d thought of him, as Daniel,’ she’d sobbed. ‘It didn’t feel right to change.’

  And, by refusing to take the money for which he had had to grovel to his father, she had won the moral high ground that Richard had felt was rightfully his, leaving him floundering in the mire of his own guilty secret.

  He understood now that for Zoë and Harry it could have been unpremeditated, a moment that would later have shocked them both. But he, Richard, had pursued Lily, spent several nights with her, lied to Martin about his whereabouts, and feasted on those memories for weeks, even months, afterwards. Zoë had certainly done wrong by him, but it was nothing to the wrong he had done her.

  Richard studied the mess of the previous night. Then he collected the glasses and poured the remains of the whisky down the sink, vowing to himself that he would clean up his act and stop drinking.

  When the tickets for the awards dinner arrived the following week, Richard tucked them into his pocket, walked to the station and took the tube to West Hampstead. It was five days since he’d had a drink and more than six months since he’d seen Zoë, the day he and Julia had asked her to move out. Two weeks later, the keys had turned up in the post, with a note about the electricity bill and the need to fix one of the sitting room windows. He knew she had moved to Delphi Street and as he walked from the station Richard felt his heart lifting with hope that they could forgive each other and start again. He felt confident now that he was capable of coming to terms with the child, who was the real victim of all that had happened; confident that he had it in himself to confess, forgive and accept, that he could be a good husband to Zoë and a good father to her baby, if he could only lay his meddlesome pride to rest.

  The door of the house was ajar, and Richard knocked on one of the frosted glass panels and peered inside, his heart beating fast with anticipation. It wasn’t going to be easy but there was a chance – a slim one – that Zoë might at least be willing to talk to him.

  ‘Hello,’ he called around the door, ‘anyone there?’

  ‘Richard?’ Gloria said as she reached the door. ‘Well, I sure didn’t expect to see you here.’

  ‘No,’ he said, looking beyond her down the hallway. ‘Sorry if it’s inconvenient but I wanted to have a word with Zoë.’

  ‘Your friend finished making that program about us yet?’ Gloria asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s done, the series goes to air next month.’

  Gloria nodded, looking him up and down.

  ‘You’re out of luck. She’s not here. Left this morning for Glasgow.’

  ‘Glasgow! Where Harry . . .’

  ‘Right first time.’

  They stared at each other across the threshold, each unwilling to volunteer more information. From an upstairs room came the sound of a baby crying. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘We have three babies here,’ Gloria said with a smile. ‘Not quite a cricket team.’

  ‘I see. Has she . . . are they . . .’ he faltered.

  Gloria paused, looking him up and down again. It was painfully obvious that she despised him. ‘You’d have to ask her about that,’ she said.

  His mind seethed. When would Zoë be back? Did Harry know about Daniel? Did Agnes know? If he could just tell Gloria how he felt and why he was there, would she help him?

  But again his pride stopped him. ‘Well, perhaps you’d tell her that I . . .’

  ‘I’ll let her know you called by,’ Gloria said. ‘I’m sure she has your number if she wants to call.’

  Richard nodded, anticipation replaced by despair. ‘Thanks, I really need to speak to her as soon as possible.’ He hated his pleading tone.

  Gloria put her hand on the door.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘please don’t forget.’ As he turned to walk down the path, he heard the door close firmly behind him.

  NINETEEN

  London – October 1969

  Zoë had never been north of London and once the train was
out of the suburbs, she put down her book and gazed out of the window, wondering whether the landscape would look very different. She had taken the overnight train and it was satisfying, in a masochistic sort of way, to know that she was in for a horrible time on the dusty moquette upholstery. It might help to erase a smidgen of her shame. She knew she was incredibly lucky. Living in a house with seven women, two other babies and a toddler meant that there was always someone on hand to care for Daniel. But even after five months, she still felt like an outsider, alienated from the discussions about politics and women’s rights. She felt the other women were there by choice, while she was there because of the lack of it. She had found a part-time job in an estate agent’s office. It was dull after the BBC, and the men there were arrogant and sleazy, but she expected nothing better.

  The day that Julia had collected her from the hospital, it had been painfully clear that she was doing so from a sense of responsibility. Their friendship could not survive this. Once alone in the flat that belonged to Richard’s parents, Zoë had feared she would soon be homeless. The future was blank and terrifying, and she knew that it was only the enormity of her responsibility for her child that stood between her and a fall into darkness.

  By lunchtime the following day, she was even more despairing. Daniel, unsettled by the move and missing the companionable murmurings of the other babies in the hospital nursery, had refused to settle, and cried on and off all night. Exhausted from lack of sleep, her breasts throbbing from attempts to feed, Zoë sank onto the sofa, the baby clasped against her chest. The two of them fell asleep, to be woken an hour later by a ring at the doorbell. Wearily, she dragged herself off the sofa and, with Daniel, stumbled bleary-eyed to answer it.

  ‘We thought you might need some help,’ Claire said.

  ‘Or some company,’ Gloria added, following her inside. ‘And we brought Marilyn because she’s a mother and knows all about this baby stuff.’

  They had also brought NapiSan, a white bucket with a lid, nappy liners and some nipple-soothing cream.

  ‘And a cake and champagne,’ Gloria said, hauling the bottle from her large cloth bag. ‘We’re gonna have a little celebration for this gorgeous boy.’ She lifted him from Zoë’s arms, and he stared up at her and smacked his lips. ‘See! He’s a party boy, aren’t you, honey?’ And she swung her amber beads over her shoulder and cuddled him against her chest.

  Claire with either Gloria or Marilyn, or all three of them, came every day. They shopped for her or urged her out with Daniel in the pram to shop or walk with them. And when she told them she would have to move out, they were indecently delighted that she could now join them in Delphi Street.

  ‘You and Daniel would have to share with me,’ Claire said, ‘if you think you wouldn’t mind that. There’s six of us in the house now, not counting the children. Seven, with you.’

  Despite their kindness, Zoë dreaded moving in with these women, who were entirely different from her. While they were prepared to support her in ways that went way beyond friendship, despite their brief acquaintance, she still held back, unable to make the leap of faith that would stop her feeling like an intruder. Now, six months later, she was still intimidated by her failure to understand their frequently expressed views, but, unlike her life with Eileen or with Richard, there were no tests for her to fail, no one else’s aspirations for her to live up to.

  The question of whether she should let Harry know that he had a son had troubled her for some time. It seemed strange that she’d heard nothing from him except for a Christmas card, since he and Agnes had moved to Glasgow, but she had made no attempt to contact them either; people, she supposed, just drifted apart. According to Gloria, Harry had no rights in the matter and Zoë had no responsibilities to him. Claire and Marilyn, on the other hand, felt that Harry had a right to know.

  ‘I mean, it’s not as if he knew and then abandoned you,’ Claire said. ‘And maybe Daniel will want to know about his father one day.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Marilyn said. ‘How will you feel explaining to Daniel that you didn’t tell his father about him?’

  ‘I don’t want to ruin things for him and Agnes,’ Zoë had said. ‘And I want to bring Daniel up on my own. You all keep telling me I can do that. It’s not as though I want Harry for myself. We weren’t in love or anything like that.’ And yet, as she said it, she wondered if it were true.

  Increasingly, she found herself remembering his tenderness, and the way he had made her feel that he valued her; something that she had only felt with Richard in the final months of her pregnancy. How did people know the difference between love and desire, or between love and being in love?

  ‘You might want Harry in your life for Daniel’s sake,’ Marilyn insisted. ‘If not now, then sometime in the future. You need to let him know.’

  ‘So you’re going to turn up on his doorstep with Daniel and say, “Hi, this is your son?”’ Gloria asked when Zoë finally announced that she was going to Glasgow.

  ‘I’m going to leave Daniel here, if that’s okay with everyone. I don’t know Harry’s address but I know where he works. I’ll go there, see him alone. I’ll get the overnight train.’

  ‘Be it on your own head, honey,’ Gloria said. ‘If that’s what you want, that’s what you gotta do.’

  And, as the train raced on into the night, her nervous excitement at the prospect of seeing Harry again warned her that she had a great deal more invested in this journey than just the need to tell him about his son.

  When the train pulled into Glasgow station, Zoë woke with a start and sat up. With only one other person in the carriage, she had managed to sleep curled up on the seat, her coat tucked around her, her handbag under her head. Every part of her body was stiff and sore. Yawning and rubbing her eyes, she stared out into a grey dawn. There was time to kill before she could expect to find Harry at the university. And now she was beset by doubts. What if he wasn’t there? What if he was angry?

  Frustrated by her own lack of forethought, she made her way along the platform to the welcoming light of the station café, where a woman in a voluminous green overall, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was dispensing very strong tea. Zoë drank the tea, and ordered a second cup and beans on toast. The woman looked at her with disapproval and said something very fast in an accent so strong that Zoë couldn’t understand it. At the third attempt, she grasped that beans were off the menu, as the woman was on her own and couldn’t be expected to do everything. Toast, it seemed, was manageable and so she settled for two slices with Marmite.

  Two young men wandered in as she was finishing her breakfast, and she asked them for directions to the university. There was a bus, they told her, that stopped right outside the station and would take her to the university entrance. By nine o’clock, she was waiting outside the central administration office when the doors opened. Her heart beat faster as she stepped up to the reception desk.

  ‘Could you tell me where I could find Harry Foreman, please?’

  ‘Harry Foreman?’ The woman looked at her closely. ‘Are you a student?’

  ‘I’m a friend from London.’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘Yes, an old friend, from London . . .’ Zoë’s mouth went dry; the way the woman was looking at her made her uncomfortable. ‘I haven’t seen him for ages and I was in Glasgow . . .’

  ‘If you’d like to take a seat for a moment . . .’ the woman said, indicating the blue and grey tweed couch in the centre of the foyer. ‘What name shall I say?’

  ‘Zoë,’ she said. ‘Zoë Linton.’

  ‘Miss Linton?’

  ‘Mrs.’

  The woman picked up the phone, and Zoë sat on the tweedy couch and stared out to the lawns and pathways crowded now with students on their way to lectures or talking in noisy groups. Maybe Harry was out there. Any minute he might emerge from the crowd, walking towards her with that familiar long stride. She had promised herself that she would ask for nothing except that he accept what she told him.
It mattered that there was one other person in the world who shared Daniel, even if he never saw him.

  A voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Mrs Linton? I’m Cecily MacFarlane, the university’s personnel officer. I believe you’re a friend of Harry Foreman?’

  Zoë jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, look, I didn’t want to bother anyone, I just wanted to know where to find him.’

  ‘I see. You haven’t been in touch for some time?’

  ‘No, not for ages,’ Zoë said, wondering why she was being interrogated. ‘It’s been almost a year, but I was in Glasgow, so I thought . . .’ She faltered. ‘Is there something wrong? Harry does work here, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Well, he did,’ Miss MacFarlane said. ‘Very briefly, at the start of the year, until . . .’ She paused. ‘Look I’m sorry, Mrs Linton, there’s no easy way to tell you this. Harry Foreman is dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. We advised his family, of course, so I’m surprised they didn’t let you know.’

  ‘But he can’t be dead.’

  ‘It was very sad,’ Miss MacFarlane continued. ‘It happened in January; he started with us after Christmas. He and Mrs Foreman were on their way home from the cinema with some other friends who were also from Jamaica. Unfortunately, they were attacked by a gang of drunks. Harry was quite badly beaten but got to his feet and staggered out into the road. He was hit by a passing car. There was brain damage and he was on life support for weeks but in the end . . . there was nothing that could be done for him. I’m so very sorry.’

  Zoë stared at the woman’s face; the eyes that matched the blue of the décor were looking sympathetically into hers. ‘He can’t be dead,’ she said again. ‘He was always so . . . so alive,’ she coughed, choking on a sob. ‘He can’t be dead.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Perhaps you’d like to come through to my office. I’ll get you some tea.’