Not My Brother's Keeper

by Colette McCormick

  Up until that point our relationship hadn’t moved much beyond kissing, but that evening the progression from the sofa to the bedroom was as natural as it was inevitable.

  I’d been nervous enough but Michelle was even more so. I suppose she was worried about how I would react to the sight of her swollen belly. To be honest, I’d wondered myself how I’d feel when we were finally alone in the bedroom. I’d told everyone that the baby didn’t make a difference but I’d known that that theory would be tested when I had nowhere to hide.

  In the end I needn’t have worried. She was beautiful and I told her so.

  And, do you know what? When I lay there afterwards, with Michelle resting against my shoulder, I felt happier and stronger than I ever had before and I knew I was where I wanted to be and where I wanted to stay.

  When we finally made love it was so good – well worth waiting for. Look, laugh if you want about a man getting soppy over his wife, but it really was incredible. We fell asleep afterwards and woke up in each other’s arms. Total cliché I know, but that’s just the way it was.

  I woke up first and lay listening to Michelle breathing. She was making this little snuffly noise. Not a snore – for God’s sake don’t tell her I said she snored – just a little noise. I wondered if Robert had ever woken up here and listened to that noise. I forced myself to push that thought aside and reminded myself that Michelle and I were together now.

  Robert was just part of the baggage that Michelle had. We all had baggage.

  We were married nine weeks after I proposed. We could have waited until after the baby was born but we didn’t want to. I didn’t sleep much the night before the wedding. I spent most of it lying on my back looking at the shadows that the streetlight outside my window cast on the ceiling.

  I loved Michelle and I knew that was why I wanted to marry her but I couldn’t help asking myself why she would want to marry me. I believed her when she said that she loved me – I felt it – I just couldn’t get rid of the little niggle that said it was because I reminded her of Robert. Was it Robert that she really wanted to marry?

  My mum had implied more than once that Michelle’s mother wanted to see her daughter married so that the baby wouldn’t be born out of wedlock. I’d thought that was old- fashioned and ridiculous, but that night I wondered if she’d been right. More to the point, I wondered if that was why Michelle was marrying me.

  Regardless of what might have happened in the past, times had changed. Girls didn’t get married anymore just because they were pregnant. Michelle was a strong-willed woman and she was more than capable of bringing up a baby on her own if she chose to. But she hadn’t chosen to do that. She had chosen to do it with me. She had chosen to marry me.

  By four o’clock, I’d realised that I was being stupid and I managed to get a couple of hours sleep before it was time to get up.

  Arranging a wedding so quickly meant that we had to get married at the rather obscure time, for those days anyway, of half eleven on a Wednesday morning. If we’d wanted a Saturday we’d have had to wait a long time.

  ‘Who gets married on a Wednesday?’ Mum had said when I told her the date.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said, ‘but we are.’ I’d half expected such a reaction so I was prepared for it.

  ‘Nobody’ll come,’ she said, ‘they’ll be at work.’

  ‘Well, we should save a bit on the champagne then, shouldn’t we,’ I replied.

  She’d been drying dishes when I told her and she threw the tea towel down on the draining board at that point.

  ‘Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Thomas,’ she said, ‘because I’m getting a bit sick of it. I can’t talk to you these days without you getting all sarcastic on me.’

  I apologised for that because I could see that she was upset. I didn’t want to upset her because she’s my mother at the end of the day but, by that same token, I couldn’t just let her get away with treating us that way.

  As it happened, she wasn’t wrong about the lack of guests at our wedding, and we ended up plighting our troth to each other in front of just twenty people. It didn’t make a difference to me but I did wonder if Michelle was a bit disappointed. Isn’t a big church wedding in a fancy frock what all girls dream of? She said that it didn’t matter, but I wasn’t sure. She said she was happy, so I had to take that at face value. Maybe we’d renew our vows one day and she could have the dress then.

  I didn’t have a brother around to ask, so I asked Craig to be my best man. He’d been surprised at first but seemed chuffed that I’d asked him and said yes. Of course, he might have agreed just so he could deliver one final message as we waited for Michelle and her dad to make the short journey from the door to the registrar’s table.

  He leaned over and whispered, ‘Don’t you dare hurt her, mate,’ in my ear.

  I didn’t get the chance to answer because as the door opened, someone pressed play on the tape recorder and The Wedding March echoed around the room.

  I’d had a meeting with the registrar before the service but had been ushered into the room we were getting married in as soon as the taxi containing Michelle and her dad had arrived outside. I’d sat with Craig and the assembled guests while Michelle had gone through the same process and when the music started to play I turned and got my first glimpse of her.

  She took my breath away.

  She moved towards me in a floaty pale pink dress with a flower in her hair and a smile on her face.

  Five minutes later we were man and wife.

  A small, hastily organised reception took place in the function room of a nearby pub and, even though it wasn’t the flashiest wedding most of them had been to, everyone seemed to have a good time. Someone described it as being a novelty. I think he was referring to the midweek wedding – you know, like it made a change from being at work.

  Even my mother seemed to be enjoying herself which came as a pleasant surprise. To be fair to her, she had pretty much come around to the idea of the wedding by then, but I’d still had this dread at the back of my mind that she would do something to put a spanner in the works. I’d held my breath when the registrar had said the bit about anyone having an objection.

  As Michelle and I prepared to leave our parents came towards us. It felt a bit like we were being tag-teamed. Michelle’s parents reached us first and her mum threw her arms around her daughter and her dad came towards me with his hand outstretched. We shook hands firmly.

  ‘Take care of my baby,’ he said and I told him that I would.

  Her mum gave me a hug then and said, ‘Welcome to the family.’

  They took a step or two back to allow my parents in. My dad shook my hand and patted my back while my mum kissed Michelle’s cheek and appeared to whisper something in her ear. Then she kissed me quickly and told us to take care of each other. It might have been a trick of the light but I thought I saw a tear trickling down her face.

  We waved goodbye to our guests and climbed into the back of a taxi that would take us to a hotel for the night.

  Michelle told me later that my mum had told her to take care of herself and the baby.

  Talking of the baby, I got the phone call exactly three weeks later.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ I told Michelle and left the office with a mixture of nerves and excitement in my stomach.

  I sat by Michelle’s head and stroked her hair. Sweat had plastered it to her head but this was no time to be squeamish. She looked at me and pain was etched all over her face. I’d have given anything just to be able to take it away but there was nothing I could do other than hold a cup of rapidly melting ice-chips to her mouth.

  We had been there for seven hours but finally the midwife emerged from Michelle’s nether regions and said it was time. ‘OK, Michelle,’ she said, ‘next time you feel the urge, I want you to push as hard as you can.’

  The midwife had hardly got the words out before Michelle’s face screwed up as she pushed. What seemed like only seconds later she was doing the
same again. The midwife, and another nurse who had appeared from God knows where, urged Michelle on while I just prayed that it would be over quickly.

  I got the shock of my life when the midwife – I think she said her name was Carol – said, ‘Come on then, Dad, it’s time,’ and motioned with her finger for me to go to her.

  I’d rather have stayed where I was, but I wasn’t about to admit that. I looked at the place that the green sheet was covering and saw the baby’s head. I don’t know if I can explain exactly how it was that I felt then; it was a mixture of awe and wonder coupled with the need to faint. I put my hand on Michelle’s knee and tried to speak but nothing came out so I patted her leg instead.

  Carol – if that was her name – got into position and, one good push later, she was cradling the baby’s head in her hands, manoeuvring the shoulders out and then grabbing the slippery little critter as it emerged.

  It was a boy.

  ROBERT

  The season was pretty much finished by the middle of September. There were one or two stragglers stringing it out and making the most of the quiet, now that the screaming kids had all gone back to school, but for the most part it was just the people that lived there.

  I thought my hours might get cut, or even finished altogether, but I got lucky. Turned out that Gloria and Phil were planning on retiring and wanted to find someone to manage the place. They asked me. I had nothing better to do, so I said yes.

  ‘Guess that means that you’ll be sticking around,’ Tanya said when I told her.

  ‘Suppose it does,’ I said. Well, where else did I have to go? Anyway, it wasn’t so bad. I had a job, somewhere to lay my head and a couple of girls who liked to spend the odd night with me. Not that they knew anything about each other.

  Tanya and I celebrated with a takeaway and an early night.

  Look I don’t want to sound like a selfish prick but that’s basically what I was back then. I had everything I wanted and I didn’t give much thought to the life I’d left behind. There I was, Rob, the genial host of The Brown Bull who had an easy way with the customers and kept a good pint.Back in my old life I’d been Robert, and even I didn’t care much for him.

  Robert’s mother had always expected good things of him, things that I had no interest in achieving. Who wanted to be a solicitor like cousin Gerald anyway? Back there, Robert was the older brother, the responsible one that his kid brother looked up to, though God knows why. Back there, he was Robert the boyfriend, the one that had a pregnant girlfriend.

  Why would I have wanted to go back to that? Robert was stifled but Rob was free. Like I said a selfish prick, and I knew it.

  Selfish but not completely thoughtless. I didn’t know when exactly Michelle would have been due to have the baby but once it got to the end of October I knew that her time would have come. I wondered what she had had and what she had called it. Traditionally, first-born sons in my family had been called Robert but, if the baby was a boy, I was pretty certain that she would have called it Lucifer before she gave it my name. I couldn’t blame her for that.

  Again, I thought of ringing her, but what would I have said? No, I’d left her behind, I’d left that life behind, and I had no intention of going back.

  So I got on with my life.

  TOM

  I’m being totally honest with you when I say that I couldn’t have loved that baby any more if he had actually been mine. He was my son, I know that, but you know what I mean: if I had actually fathered him. I looked at him and my heart soared.

  Michelle and the baby were to be moved to a ward once they’d been given the all clear by the doctor so, while the examinations were happening, I went to the reception part of the maternity ward to use the pay phone to ring our families.

  I rang her parents first and the telephone was answered on the first ring, which put an image in my head of them having sat by the phone for the last seven hours since I’d called them to say Michelle had gone into labour.

  Her mum’s voice was shaky as she said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s a boy,’ I told her, and heard her give a little gasp.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said and I could tell that she was crying by that point. ‘Are they both all right?’

  I told them they were fine, although Michelle was obviously tired, and that hopefully they were going to be moved to a ward shortly. She asked when they would be able to visit and I felt bad saying they’d have to wait until the following afternoon. It was getting late by then, so I told her I would ring in the morning to let them know which ward to go to.

  ‘Tom,’ her mum said. I heard her sniff and then she said, ‘Thank you,’ though I wasn’t entirely sure what she was thanking me for.

  I rang my parents next and it was Dad who answered the phone. We had a short conversation where he offered his congratulations and asked how they both were and then he told me that my mum would like to have a word.

  She asked me the same questions that Dad had and I gave her the same answers, then she took a deep breath and said, ‘Tom, will you please tell Michelle how happy we are?’ I assured her that I would. ‘Goodnight, son,’ she added, ‘see you soon.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mum,’ I said and, after the phone line had gone dead, I stood with the receiver in my hand just looking at it.

  By the time I got back to Michelle she had had her check-up and so had the baby and they were being prepared to be moved to a ward. A porter turned up to push the bed that Michelle still lay on and, together with a nurse who carried the baby, I followed them to a lift and up a couple of floors to the maternity ward.

  It was well past ten o’clock by that point so I had to leave them, though that was the last thing that I wanted to do. But it was a four-bed ward and two of those beds were occupied so it wouldn’t have been fair to stay even if the nurses had allowed it. I stroked the baby’s head and whispered, ‘Goodnight, little fella,’ and then I leaned over to Michelle. I kissed her and told her that I would be in to see her as soon as I could.

  I was walking on air as I went down the corridor. The baby was here and they were both all right. I couldn’t have been happier. As I drove back to the house that we were renting from Michelle’s Uncle George and Aunty Paula the world looked like a different place – a better place.

  A couple of hours later, I still hadn’t gone to bed. I was sitting in a chair with a glass of whisky, reflecting on the conversation that Michelle and I had had the week before. We had spoken about the baby’s birth certificate. I wasn’t the natural father and therefore had no right to have my name on the certificate. It was disappointing but the law was the law at the end of the day. At first, Michelle had suggested stretching the truth and just putting my name in the box marked ‘Father’.

  ‘It’ll have your genes, so why not,’ she’d said.

  Tempting as that was, we soon decided that obeying the law was probably the best option.

  ‘But I want you to be the father,’ she’d said.

  ‘I will be,’ I’d told her, ‘in every way that matters.’ We’d been sitting on the sofa in the living room and I pulled her closer to me with the arm that had been lying loosely over her shoulders.

  ‘I know,’ she’d said, ‘but I want your name on the certificate.’

  ‘And I will be,’ I reminded her, ‘it’s just going to take longer.’

  The plan was that I would legally adopt the baby and then my name could go on the certificate, but there was a process to go through and that was going to take the best part of a year. It would be worth the wait.

  I went to bed eventually and slept better than I had in years.

  The thought of being away from Michelle and the baby until the following night was like a punch to the gut, but at lunchtime the next day my boss came up to me and said, ‘Bugger off and see that babby of yours.’ I didn’t need telling twice; I was out of there like a shot.

  I got to the ward at the same time as Michelle’s parents, and my mother-in law threw her arms around me in a big hug. S
he’d never done that before. I decided that maybe Michelle had been right when she’d told me one night that her mother thought I was a hero.

  Strictly speaking it was only two visitors to a bed, but the nursing staff turned a blind eye to that particular rule and almost every bed we passed had at least three people sitting around it.

  Michelle seemed pleased to see us all but our son couldn’t have cared less and spent the whole time fast asleep in his crib. Did you notice there that I called him ‘our son’? Even before we were married we had established that Michelle’s child would be my child.

  I stopped off at my parents’ house on the way home from the hospital. I shouted, ‘Hello, it’s just me,’ as I opened the door and I heard Mum’s voice coming from upstairs. I thought it sounded like she was in Robert’s old room but I couldn’t be sure.

  She came down the stairs with a duster in her hand and asked if I had been to the hospital. I told her I had.

  ‘How’s the baby?’ she asked, and I told her that he was fine. She asked who he looked like and I said that he looked like a baby. I’m sorry, but what did she want me to say? That he looked like Robert? He was less than a day old for God’s sake. His face looked like a prune. A beautiful prune, I grant you, but a prune is a prune at the end of the day.

  ‘You can decide for yourself when you visit him,’ I said and her face lit up at the prospect of that. She asked when that would be and I said that they could go that night.

  If I’d thought that her face lit up when I’d suggested the visit it was nothing compared to what happened when she saw the little fella.

  Michelle was propped up in bed with him in her arms as we walked in and Mum made a bee-line for him. She held her hands out in a ‘Can I have a hold?’ sort of gesture but Michelle looked past her to me and said, ‘Sorry, but his daddy hasn’t even had a hold of him yet.’ Our eyes smiled at each other but I think we kept it off our lips.

  I leaned in and kissed her. I asked her how she was as she slid our baby into my arms. I sat in the wing back chair beside the bed and watched my son fall asleep in my arms. Ten minutes or so later, Michelle suggested that my mother might like to hold her new grandson and I gently passed him over to her. Dad got in close and as they were billing and cooing over him Michelle and I shared a look. We had made our point.