Astonishing Splashes of Colour (34 page)

I change buses and go into the city centre for some lunch in the restaurant at the top of Rackhams. I choose salmon salad and a slice of lemon meringue pie with a cup of tea. I sit for a long time, eating slowly, watching everyone else. Most people come in pairs, mainly female and elderly. Respectable people with perms and lipstick and handbags. They seem to have so much to say to each other.

I look at my watch. The minute hand moves so slowly. Everything I do stretches out into slow motion. I pick the fork up, put it down again, bring it up again, put the fork into my mouth and eat. Inside, my stomach has become a furiously active washing machine, rotating and pounding, rocking and mangling. I move even more slowly.

I set my mind to leave at 12:50. Mustn’t be late. Then I can slip in with everyone else.

The minute hand reaches ten. I eat the final mouthful of lemon meringue and gulp down the last of the tea while I stand, pushing my chair away.

Now that it’s time to go, I can’t wait. I pull on my denim jacket as I walk out through the tables, flinging my bag over my shoulder.

“Excuse me.”

I hear the voice behind me and nearly start to run. They know, I think, they know. I walk deliberately, moving every muscle with enormous care, forcing myself to look normal—

Someone in front of me puts out an arm to stop me and I try to push past him. “I’m late,” I say. “I can’t stop.”

But he holds my arm firmly. A big, plump man with a red face
and dark hair which is too bushy and black for his age. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I think perhaps—”

The person behind me reaches us. I don’t want to turn and look at her. “Sorry,” she says.

I turn. She’s a waitress. She thrusts out a hand, holding a purse which looks like my purse.

“You forgot this,” she says.

I stare at her in astonishment. “No,” I say. “Mine’s in my bag.”

The man has let go of my arm. I could just make a run for it.

“But it must be yours,” says the waitress. “You left it on your table.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Look. It’s here in my bag.”

But it isn’t. There is no purse in my bag. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re right.”

The waitress smiles and hands it over. The man goes back to selecting his tray of food.

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you.”

I turn away and walk quickly to the escalator. I’ve lost valuable time. It is already one o’clock and I haven’t even got to the right bus stop.

Hurry, I think. Hurry.

T
HE
M
ATERNITY
H
OSPITAL SMELLS
new and modern and comfortable. The atmosphere is restful, with a gentle pink carpet and pale wood fittings. It’s amalgamated with the Women’s Hospital now, combining babies and women, so the doctors don’t have to travel from one hospital to the other any more. I don’t know how they find room for both, when there was once only room for babies, but everything looks organized and controlled.

I’m early after all, so I stand outside the glass doors for a while before going in. I check my watch occasionally and study the various approaches as if I’m waiting to meet someone. Just in case anyone is watching me.

People walk in through the automatic glass doors easily, talking, carrying flowers and boxes of chocolates, preoccupied with their own lives. Other people come out and walk briskly to the car park. Some medical students pass me, shivering in their white coats and chattering enthusiastically.

“Caesarean,” I hear them say, “balti,” “stethoscope upside down.” I watch them enviously, admiring their enthusiasm, but they make me feel old. They’re like children. They know instinctively how to enjoy themselves.

The automatic doors open, and a small group of people emerges. Among them, there’s a young woman who looks tired and slightly unsteady, with unnaturally bright eyes. Another, older woman beside her, is almost her twin. They have the same tidy hair, but the younger woman is blonde, while the older one has streaks of grey. They’re the same height. The younger one looks pale and unwell, the other tanned and at ease. With them is a nurse who’s holding something in her arms, wrapped in an exquisitely knitted cream shawl. It takes me some time to realize that she’s carrying the new baby—a tiny, perfect baby who must only have been breathing independently for about twenty-four hours.

“Where is he?” says the young woman, stamping her feet up and down. “The baby will get cold.”

“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” says the older woman. “Don’t forget he’s had to walk all the way to the car park.”

The nurse looks down at the baby in her arms. “Look at him,” she says. “Not a care in the world.”

The young woman leans over to the baby and her face softens. She puts out a finger and strokes the baby’s face gently. I can’t see the baby from where I am standing but I can see the calming effect he has on his mother.

“Here he is,” says the older woman and waves to a silver-blue BMW which is rolling gently towards the entrance. The driver parks the car and jumps out immediately to open the door for the women. He’s older than I expected, old enough to be the younger woman’s father.

They fuss over the baby and who is going to hold it. The man opens the door and the young woman slides into the back seat. The nurse hands the baby to her.

“Steady,” the man keeps saying. “Be careful now.”

“Stop fussing, Dad,” she says as she pulls her feet in neatly behind her.

“Stop fussing, Ronald,” says the older woman, and walks round to the passenger side.

Ronald grins cheerfully at the nurse before he gets back in. “I’m a grandfather,” he says. “I don’t look it, do I?”

“Not a day over twenty,” says the nurse. She waves as they drive off, and then goes back in to deliver another baby.

I try to imagine Margaret doing the same thing, but I can’t make her fit.

This is a place full of babies.

Babies calm people—

Babies make people normal—

Babies are real—

I find I am sitting on a pink seat in the Maternity Hospital, gazing into space, thinking of mothers. I look at my watch. Two o’clock. I can’t believe it. I don’t remember coming in. Where has all the time gone? I jump up and bump into a nurse who has just come out of the lift with a woman in a wheelchair.

“Sorry,” I say and dodge round her to catch the lift while the doors are still open.

The nurse expects people to respond to her authority and make room for her. You can see it in the way she moves, the way she looks at me.

“Please walk more carefully,” she says.

A flush creeps up my face. “Sorry,” I say again and look past her at the reception desk. Nobody is watching us. Just as I reach the lift doors, they close. I press the button and wait.

The lift comes down again and three people step out chatting animatedly. They don’t see me as I slip in behind them.

I study the buttons for the different floors. What am I doing here?

Looking for a baby.

There are plenty of babies here. Which one do you want?

Any one. It doesn’t matter.

There are sleeping babies, screaming babies, fat babies, skinny babies, blue eyes—don’t they all have blue eyes?—blond hair, black hair, no hair.

It doesn’t matter. Just a baby.

I reach out and press a number at random. The lift glides up and I step out on to a floor that is immediately familiar. The smell jumps up at me and I stop. I’ve been here before.

I came in on a trolley. It was an emergency. People were talking around me. I was looking at the ceiling, knowing that something
was horribly wrong, wondering if I was going to die. It’s a shame for James, I thought.

Then the trolley stopped moving.

“When did you last eat?” said a voice.

“I don’t know.” I was annoyed that they should be interested in my diet, but his voice sounded so urgent. I tried to remember where we were in the day. “Breakfast, I suppose.”

“Good. You’re going to feel a small prick on your hand. Can you count backwards from twenty?”

Everything hurts. How can I count while it all hurts so much? But I did it anyway, too tired to argue. “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, sev-en-teen, six …”

When I woke up, I could smell the hospital around me, and I still hurt, but not so much. I was lying in a bed in a clean, organized place that smelled of disinfectant. I wanted to know about the baby, but I didn’t want to ask. I knew, really. Nobody had to tell me.

They did tell me eventually. “I’m sorry, Katherine—”

Who’s Katherine? Who are they talking to? Do I know her?

“Your baby didn’t survive.”

I know. It’s not necessary to tell me.

And later they explained that they had to take away my womb as well. Cut me open, take away the whole thing, the baby in its little sac, the miracle creature who lived off me for six months, lift it out, tie up the blood vessels, sew me back up again. Chuck the waste down the sluice. A nice neat job. The mother survived. Mission accomplished.

“You had a ruptured womb,” a doctor told me. “There was nothing else we could do—you are lucky to have survived at all. We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”

But what was the point? Why not let us die together? That would have been much more reasonable.

“Why?” I said. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “These things happen. Nobody knows why.”

If I hadn’t painted the spare room in James’s flat, if I hadn’t run for the bus, if I hadn’t climbed the stairs to my flat so often in the last few days—if I hadn’t done any of those things, or all of those things…. They said it wasn’t my fault. But it doesn’t happen to everyone. Only me. So it must have been my fault.

“Can I help you?” A nurse is standing beside me—a girl, a child.

“I’m looking for my sister-in-law. Wellington. Suzy Wellington.”

The girl looks puzzled. “I don’t think she’s on this ward,” she says. “What’s she in for?”

“A baby. She’s just had a baby.”

Her face clears. “You’re on the wrong floor. We only deliver babies here. Then they go up to the wards. But I can go and check for you.”

I shake my head. “What floor am I on?”

“Third.”

“Oh, sorry,” I say quickly. “I must have pressed the wrong button. I thought I was on the fourth floor.”

I turn back to the lift, which is still open. I go in and press for the fourth floor. As the doors glide shut, I smile at the nurse.

There’s no one outside the lift on the next floor. I step out and look round. The place seems deserted, although I can hear the gentle murmur of people talking in the distance. I wait for a while and nothing happens. It feels quiet, sleeping, unoccupied.

I walk down the corridor. Softly, then more boldly. No one is going to challenge me. I look into the first room of four beds. This is OK. All visitors look round the rooms like this. Looking for the right person. Three women lie there, talking to each
other. Babies in cots at the foot of their beds. Their miniature, breathing forms, wrapped cosily in cream hospital blankets.

The next room. Full. Two women asleep, the others with husbands, mothers, aunties politely round the beds. Talking in low voices about the weather. Television, the price of nappies.

The next room is empty. I step in. A sudden snore. There’s a woman in the far corner. Fast asleep with her mouth open, breathing fiercely.

A baby is sleeping in the cot at the end of her bed. A baby. I stand above his cot and look at him. He’s the baby I have come for. My baby. His face is pink and smooth, the tiny line of eyelashes resting moistly on his cheeks, a little tuft of black hair coming to a point just above his eyes.

I lean over to pick him up. Just as I get my hands underneath him, a loud snore erupts from the bed. I freeze as the woman rolls over to face me. But she is still asleep, her eyes shut, her face loose and crumpled.

I pick up the baby, who murmurs. I hold him in my arms and look at him. This is the baby I’ve been waiting for. It’s difficult to breathe properly, the pain of love is so hard to bear. I take him into the nearest toilets, marked
FOR PATIENTS ONLY.
There’s no sign of anyone, so I slip into one of the cubicles.

Once inside, I put Henry gently down on the floor, and open up the large Marks & Spencer carrier bag I’ve brought with me. I lay him inside, on his back, so he won’t die of cot death. I wrap him all around with my own blanket, tucking it firmly round the little tag on his ankle. If it goes off, we’ll just have to run. He sleeps through all of this, with only a snuffle.