Ashes In the Wind (42 page)

‘Good to see you,’ says Matthew as he bundles Imogen into the car.

‘Bloody hell,’ says James to the rear of the Mercedes as they drive away. He stands silent on the pavement, trying to understand what he has just heard.

Back at Donhead he continues to turn over Imogen’s words and their possible implications. If Anna is pregnant, is the baby his? It was five months since they had parted, and a little longer since they last made love on Holy Island. And there was Zachariah. Or perhaps a new, more recent lover.

That evening he calls Jack Pearson, uncertain how helpful he will be.

‘Aye, she’s pregnant,’ says Jack disapprovingly. ‘Gone back to Newcastle to have the baby.’

‘Can I have her address, her telephone number?’

‘She made me promise not to give them to anyone – not to you, not to Zachariah, not to her mother.’

‘Come on, Jack, I need to talk to her.’

‘Sorry, can’t help.’

‘Won’t help, you mean,’ says James and hangs up.

For two days James thinks of nothing else but how to find Anna. He decides to go north; once in Newcastle he sits in his hotel bedroom making phone calls. He tries to contact Zach through his rugby club.

‘Zach’s in the South, transferred to Saracens at the start of the season,’ the Falcons manager tells him, and Saracens are unwilling to part with Zach’s phone number.

He tries the university, but the alumni register has only Anna’s Allenmouth address. He goes to the maternity department in Fenwick’s, hangs around there for a morning, getting increasingly hostile looks from the security guards, and finds the shop-floor assistants are unwilling to talk about recent customers. Tired and dispirited, he goes back to his hotel, has an indifferent meal and goes to bed.

The next morning he decides that his only remaining route to Anna is through the National Health Service. He remembers the name of the Allenmouth GP who had patched up his broken nose, and thinks it a reasonable bet that he also looked after both the Pearsons. He rings Newcastle General and asks to be put through to Midwifery.

‘It’s Dr Anderton here from Allenmouth. Can you put me through to Anna Pearson’s midwife, please?’

There is a long delay, which James imagines is a security check but in fact is the search through manual records.

‘Anna’s in our one-to-one midwife programme. Ring back after lunch and speak to Mrs Anstruther.’

James rings back, bolder after this first little success, and speaks to Mrs Anstruther.

‘Dr Anderton here, Anna Pearson’s GP. You’ve got her medical records, but I just wanted to confirm that though her blood pressure’s pretty good,’ James hopes this is true, ‘you need to check it regularly, as there’s a family history.’

‘Thank you, Doctor, that’s routine here.’

‘I hope she’s going to antenatal classes. She’s on the old side for a first baby, and she had a termination two years ago.’

‘She’s booked into the Low Fell antenatal clinic.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Anstruther.’

James hangs up, his hands shaking and his mouth dry, amazed at the fluency of his lies and wondering how many laws he has broken.

‘Ex-Permanent Secretary Stalks Former Lover in Doctor Dupe Scandal’; he writes his own
Daily Mail
headline, then rings the Low Fell clinic. Their sessions are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

James sits in a Low Fell café on Monday afternoon opposite the clinic, feeling like a seedy private detective. That’s exactly how I’m behaving, he tells himself. A dozen pregnant women arrive, most in their late teens or early twenties, half of them with their partners, but no Anna.

He returns on Wednesday to the café, watches a similar group of expectant mothers enter the clinic – and then Anna, walking as fast as she can manage, goes up the clinic steps.

It’s
your
blood pressure the midwife should be watching, he tells himself, as his heart pounds. And now what do you do?

An hour and a half and three cups of coffee later, the class comes out. James crosses the street to where Anna is talking to a young couple and walks up to her; uncertain what to say, he holds out both hands in greeting, or perhaps in supplication. Anna looks astonished, frowns, gives a little smile, takes one of James’s hands, and then lets it go.

‘How did you find me? Did Jack tell you where I was?’

‘You know Jack better than that. I tracked you down – bloodhounds, DNA, police records.’ James tries, not very successfully, to sound light-hearted. ‘Can we have a cup of coffee? I promise not to be a nuisance.’

Anna softens at the tremor in James’s voice; they cross to the coffee shop. Anna looks beautiful, tired, enormous.

‘You look as though you’ll have the baby any minute.’

‘I’ve three months to go, and I’ll be glad when it’s over. Green tea for me, please.’

James drinks a glass of water, asks for a second, cannot bring himself to ask the only question he wants to ask.

Anna begins. ‘Come on, tell me how you found me.’

James tells her the story, half embarrassed, half proud.

‘A senior civil servant impersonating a GP? Jail if you’re caught. I
am
impressed. I knew Imogen would talk to you, nosy cow. She didn’t quite have the nerve to ask who the father was.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Dear James, I don’t know and I don’t care. This is my baby, I’ve decided to have it, and I’m strong enough to have it on my own. Jack thinks I’m irresponsible, and perhaps he’s right, but that’s what I’m doing.’

‘I could be quite useful, you know. I’ve had one baby already.’

‘You mean your ex-wife had one. No. Although I’m glad you found me. I hated how we parted. Your nose seems quite straight. Zach packs quite a punch, as we both know.’

James laughs in spite of himself. ‘Where is Zach?’

‘He’s left the Falcons, gone south, but you knew that already. He was outraged when I told him I was pregnant and didn’t know, or care, which of you was the father. I thought he was going to hit me again. Called me a Jezebel, a harlot, and stormed off. He’ll get rid of his rage on the rugby pitch; I wouldn’t like to be the first inside centre he’s up against. James, I’m tired, I need to go home – see me to the bus stop.’

‘Will you at least give me your telephone number?’

‘No, I won’t. I know you well enough, you’ll keep ringing, and I’m going to do this on my own. Perhaps after the baby is born...’ She leaves the sentence unfinished.

James realizes there is little point in arguing. He walks Anna to the bus stop, puts his arms around her as the bus arrives, presses her bump against his stomach and feels the baby kick.

Anna smiles. ‘It’s the excitement; she’s lively.’

‘Perhaps it’s a kick of recognition.’

‘She does that all the time. And by the way, I don’t know it’s a girl.’

Anna gets carefully onto the bus, sits by the window and gives a little wave as the bus pulls away. James waves back, tears in his eyes. Although he arrived in Newcastle expecting nothing, he had hoped to leave with more.

J
AMES
SPENDS
THE
next three months writing his book. He alternates between Donhead, the British Library and Colindale;
The Kerryman
is the best single source for background material to his great-grandmother’s diaries. For two days he makes a detour and reads the contemporary accounts of his grandmother’s execution. The indignation of the
Irish Times
at the murder of an upper-class Englishwoman is matched only by their satisfaction at the execution of the Volunteers after the Staigue Fort battle. James discounts both.

He gives his project – it isn’t quite a book, but it isn’t scholarly enough to be called a thesis – a name: ‘Kerry Diaries 1840–1890 – The Famine and the Religious Revival’.

‘Catchy title, Dad,’ says Georgia, down from London for the weekend with her husband. ‘Bestseller list, that’s certain.’

James laughs; he loves being teased by his daughter, whom he adores unconditionally. He is less certain about her husband.

Georgia met Stephen Parker in her last year at Bristol, and they were married, absurdly young in James’s view, three years later. James wants to like Stephen, though he knows no one will ever be good enough for his attractive, clever, only child. Stephen has a Mathematics degree, which he immediately afterwards took to Goldman Sachs, first in London, then in New York, leaving after three years to set up his own hedge fund.

James has tried manfully to understand what Stephen does and the place of hedge funds in the grander scheme of things; he has failed on both counts.

‘We’re a long-short fund, international remit, we take positions in whatever seems to be on the move – equities, bonds, commodities, CDOs, currency. We use all sorts of instruments. Swaps, contracts for difference, puts, calls, simple hedges. Today we like oil and gold, so we’re long, hate the lira and the yen, so we’re short. Next month it could be different.’

‘It sounds like betting to me,’ says James unwisely.

‘Nothing of the kind,’ replies Stephen. ‘We use highly sophisticated algorithms to help us make our selections.’

‘I’ve met men who had infallible systems for picking horses.’

‘Look, we have 1.3 billion dollars under management, last year we made thirty-three million dollars before tax – and there isn’t much of that, our tax domicile is Dublin – and we employ sixty people, mostly graduates, half of them women, less than half born in the UK.’

‘How many people do you employ at Donhead, Dad?’ says Georgia, ending the conversation.

Later, when he is walking with Georgia, she says, ‘You don’t like him, do you? It’s because he isn’t public school and Oxbridge and his parents live in Dorking.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ says James. ‘I do like him. I just don’t care for what he does. I respect the fact that he works incredibly hard, he’s a good provider, and he clearly loves you. As do I.’

‘That’ll have to do,’ says Georgia as they turn back to the house.

A week later James gets a phone call from Anna’s father.

‘She’s just gone into labour. I think you should get up here.’ He hangs up before James can reply.

Twenty hours later he is in the Newcastle General, fighting his way past porters, self-important obstetricians, bustling lab technicians, triage nurses and a forest of contradictory NHS signs. He finds the maternity ward, and as he approaches the desk he sees Zach. They look at each other warily.

‘We’re here to see Anna Pearson,’ says James.

‘Which one of you is the father?’

‘I am,’ they reply together.

The nurse laughs.

‘Sperm donor and natural father,’ says James, without deciding which role he prefers. Zach opens his mouth to speak, and decides to keep quiet.

‘She’s in Room Fourteen.’

They walk down the corridor in silence. Anna is sleeping; beside her bed is a cot. James and Zach look down at the baby, also fast asleep, and both men smile. James picks up the tag on the baby’s cot and shows it to Zach; it reads ‘Jack James Zachariah Pearson’.

‘I’d like to know one way or the other,’ says Zach.

‘That’s not Anna’s plan. She’s made it very clear to me that it’s her baby, not yours or mine. We’ll have to settle for that.’

‘Surely you want to know?’

‘If he’s mine, yes. If he’s not...’

‘I think he looks like me,’ says Zach. James laughs; the idea that the tiny, wrinkled, red-faced, sleeping baby looks like anyone, except perhaps Winston Churchill, is wonderfully absurd. After a moment Zach starts to laugh too.

The laughter wakes Anna.

‘I’m surprised they let two of you in.’

‘It needed a little ingenuity,’ says James, but before he can explain, a nurse bustles in and says, ‘You can’t stay any longer; the obstetrician is on his way,’ and shows them out.

James stays in Newcastle for two more days. The first time he visits Anna, Zach is there, the second time he is on his own.

‘Where are you going to live? I want to help, and there’s plenty of room at Donhead.’

‘I’m staying in Newcastle. I can get work here, and there’s good support for single mums.’

‘You’re only a single mother through choice. There are two of us; you should choose me.’

‘I think we’ll be better on our own,’ Anna says as Jack James Zachariah nuzzles hungrily at her breast.

James feels a rush of affection for the two of them. Later he holds the baby, marvelling at his lightness and his warm milky smell. He kisses the baby, kisses Anna and leaves, but not before extracting a promise that she will send him her address once she and the baby are out of hospital and settled.

In Dorset, James finds Donhead has lost the ability to calm and settle his troubled mind. He has lost interest in his fallow deer, and Achilles’ successor still remains unnamed. Even the view across to Cranborne Chase no longer holds him, as the fold upon fold of hills stretching out towards the sea used to hold him for minutes at a time.

His Irish project is now finished. Submitted for peer review by two members of the Hibernian Historical Society, it passes their detailed scrutiny with only a few minor amendments. The chairman writes to James, confirming that it is eligible to be published as No. Sixty-Three in their monograph series, ‘Provided that, as I warned you, you are prepared to pay for the costs of production’. James is prepared, and has an enjoyable time with the Dublin printers choosing typefaces, endpapers and binding.

‘Quarter bound in green leather and green cloth, green marbled end papers, set in Caslon 14 point, which the Cuala Press used to publish poems illustrated by Jack Yeats. Edition limited to five hundred copies, each numbered and signed by the author. Only one illustration, a portrait of my great-grandfather, bearded and looking like an Old Testament prophet, preaching the Word at the Merrion Hall,’ he tells Georgia.

‘Dad, that sounds wonderful. I look forward to getting a copy and to seeing it in W. H. Smith at Heathrow.’

There is a little launch party at Trinity College, Dublin, where the chairman of the Society makes a generous speech praising ‘the elegance of the prose, matched by the elegance of the production’. There is even a favourable, if small, review in the
Irish Times
.