Dear Thing (40 page)

‘He’s awake,’ said Ben. ‘Do you want to hold him?’

Claire stepped back. ‘I can’t, Ben. Not yet.’

‘But soon?’

‘I don’t know.’ She went to the door and put her hand on the knob. ‘You’ve got the milk, anyway. For when you need it.’

‘Come back later,’ he said. ‘Or tomorrow.’

Thing’s face peeped out of the gap in Ben’s shirt. He was looking up at his father.

‘I will,’ she said.

Romily got down on her hands and knees, grunting, to look underneath the sofa and pulled out Posie’s school bag. It had dust balls clinging to it. Romily dumped out the contents: homework folder, reading book and a crumpled envelope.

‘Pose?’ she called. ‘You didn’t tell me you had any letters home?’ They had had a discussion about this.

‘What?’ Posie’s voice was muffled, as if she was also clearing out underneath something. Romily opened the envelope.

It was an invitation to a Christmas party for Emily and Daniel, for today. Written at the bottom in an untidy hand was a message:
Dear Posie, please make sure your mum comes to the party, too. There will be chocolate. Eleanor x

Romily jumped up. It was the first time she’d done that in a while, and it felt pretty good. She was getting stronger. ‘Posie!’ she called. ‘Hurry up! We’ve got to go to a party.’ She checked the time on the invitation. ‘Now!’

Posie trailed out of her room. She was wearing a princess dress and a woollen hat. ‘What party?’ she said.

‘Emily’s having a Christmas party. The invitation was in your bag.’

‘Oh. But I don’t really know Emily.’

‘That doesn’t matter. You need friends, Posie. Real friends. You need to spend time with children your own age.’

‘I don’t think I want to.’

‘You’ve got a choice. You can go to a party, or I can stand over you while you clean that bedroom
properly
.’

Posie twisted her toe on the carpet. ‘All right, we can go to the party.’

The address was only ten minutes’ walk from their flat, and was two terraced houses both identically decorated for Christmas. Romily knocked on the blue door, number 14, and the red door at number 16 opened. Eleanor beckoned them in with a big smile.

‘I’m so pleased you could make it!’ she said, taking their coats and the bottle of orange juice that Romily had brought from her refrigerator. ‘I was going to pop by and make sure you got the invitation, but I wasn’t certain where you lived. Posie, the children are in the next room making Christmas decorations. Romily, come through to the kitchen for the grown-up activities.’

The terraces had been knocked together inside, and the kitchen took up what would have been one entire reception room. Pastries covered the table and lots of people crowded together, holding glasses and talking. Cinnamon and mulled wine scented the air and, in the background, a tall man circulated with a bottle in one hand and a plate in the other.

‘Are you drinking?’ Eleanor hesitated over a vat of mulled wine and a similar one of hot chocolate. Romily shook her head and Eleanor ladled up a mug of the chocolate.

‘You’ve had the baby!’ One of the Mummies from school sidled up to Romily. ‘That’s wonderful! How is— I mean, how are the parents doing? Do you know?’

‘They’re doing pretty well,’ Romily said.

‘We think you are so brave,’ said another Mummy. Eleanor handed Romily her mug, and winked.

‘Not brave,’ said Romily. ‘Sort of foolish, really. I’d for gotten how tough pregnancy is.’

‘So what’s this I hear about you working at the museum?’
Eleanor cut in deftly. ‘We love it there. Daniel goes in every week to stroke the stuffed badger.’

A chorus of praise for the stuffed badger.

‘He’s called Gavin the Badger,’ said Romily. She tapped her nose. ‘Insider knowledge.’

Some time later when Posie didn’t reappear asking to go home, Romily went to find her. She was sitting next to Emily halfway up the stairs, their hands over their eyes, counting.

‘Hide and Seek?’ she asked.

‘We’re busy.’

Giggles from upstairs. ‘Ready or not, here we come!’ cried Emily, and she and Posie both dropped their hands and stood up at the same time.

Romily couldn’t help it. She grabbed Posie and hugged her.

‘I am your mother and I love you,’ she said to her, her face buried in her hair.

‘Yes, I
know
, you keep saying that. Go back to the parents where you belong.’

But Romily held on to her for a moment more, while Emily started up the stairs. ‘Are you and Emily friends now?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know. She’s all right. Do you know she has two daddies? One who really made her and one who lives with her? I told her about Thing and she wants to come and visit him sometime.’

‘That sounds great.’

Posie gave her a swift kiss back and then she ran away up the stairs, after her friend.

You give birth to children so that they will go away from you
, Romily thought.
So that they’ll grow up and have their own lives with people they’ve chosen. It’s natural. And the hurting is natural, too
.

BY THE MORNING
of Christmas Eve the snow had melted to patches here and there in Claire’s front garden, and it was already gone in Brickham. When Claire got to the door of Ben’s flat, balancing the shopping bags and the live little tree in its pot, she found a stack of wrapped gifts waiting on the doormat. She recognized Posie’s handwriting on the tags.

Through the door she could hear the baby wailing.

Ben had given her a key; she opened the door and slipped inside. The flat looked as if a bomb had exploded in it. Every light was on and the television played Christmas carols. Among the wreckage, Ben strode with Thing on his shoulder, patting his back and gently bouncing his body.

‘He’s been crying all night,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know what to do. I nearly called A&E. What if something is wrong?’

The baby’s face was red, screwed up into a tight little ball of anger with an open toothless mouth.

Claire put down the bags: a small turkey, potatoes, vegetables. She didn’t think Ben should be without Christmas dinner. She hadn’t decided yet whether she would cook it for him, or if she was going to her parents’ house. ‘Does he have a fever?’

‘I don’t think so. The health visitor was here yesterday and she said he was fine. He started crying at about two this morning and he hasn’t stopped. Nothing works. He won’t eat, he won’t sleep, he just cries.’ Ben kept walking in circles round the perimeter of the flat, kept bouncing, skirting nappies and cuddly animals. The television was playing ‘Silent Night’.

The flat smelled of stale coffee and posset. The central heating was on high. Ben was in the same clothes he’d been wearing yesterday. And, come to think of it, the day before. ‘When was the last time you were outside?’ she asked.

‘Outside?’

‘Let’s go for a walk. It always used to work with Posie.’

‘Isn’t it too cold?’

She rummaged through the untidy piles of clothing, finding socks, a hat, a sleep suit, the green cardigan and tiny white shoes she’d bought with Romily. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Layer him up. I’ll pack a bag.’

She’d noticed that Ben had become practised at changing the baby, but with Thing shouting and curling up his limbs it took some time to get him dressed. By the time he was, Claire had found the sling and was untangling its long straps. ‘Let me put this on you so you can carry him.’

‘Do you remember how it works?’

‘It’s marketed for new parents, how hard can it be?’

She looped the straps around his arms and connected them in front, making a pocket ready to hold the baby. Fastened up, Thing lay against Ben’s chest, legs dangling like a frog’s, crying into the front of his shirt. Ben wrapped his coat around the baby and they went out of the flat together, downstairs and outside.

The baby paused for a moment, sensing the fresh air, but
then began crying again. ‘Do you think he’s in pain?’ Ben asked her.

She understood Ben’s anguish. Every cry wrenched her insides, called on all her instincts to soothe and protect. ‘Let’s walk for a little while and see if he settles down. If he doesn’t, we can ring the health visitor or go to the hospital.’

Without discussing it they headed for the town centre. Brickham was crowded with people clutching bags and parcels; coloured lights dripped from the buildings. ‘I’d forgotten that all of this was going on without us,’ said Ben.

A couple pushing a pram passed them. The mother, hearing the baby crying and seeing Ben with the sling, smiled at Ben and then at Claire. A smile of sympathy and complicity, the sort of smile Claire had seen mothers giving each other.

This woman thought Ben and Claire were normal parents with their normal newborn. A normal family.

As simple and as complicated, as everyday and as extraordinary, as that.

They entered Brickham’s main pedestrianized shopping area. The shop windows sparkled with artificial snow and gleamed with goods for sale. Claire smelled coffee and baking bread.

‘I haven’t got you a present,’ said Ben. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I think,’ said Claire, ‘that if we’re going to be a family, you’re going to have to stop saying you’re sorry.’

He stopped walking and looked at her over the down of the baby’s head.

‘Claire,’ he said, reaching for her. The volume of the baby’s cries suddenly rose up into a scream, and then subsided into a grunt. And then silence.

Alarmed, they both bent towards him. His cheeks were pink, not red, and he gazed calmly back at them, as if wondering why they were making such a fuss.

‘What happened—’ Claire began, but then the scent struck both of them at the same time.

‘Ugh, that smells like a big one,’ said Ben. ‘No wonder you were shouting about it, mate.’ He began to laugh. ‘Imagine if I’d gone to A&E.’

‘We should get him changed.’ She pointed at the café on the corner. He held the door open for her, as he always did.

She gave him a nappy, wipes and a change of clothing from the bag she’d packed and he headed to the baby changing room. She bought them each a coffee and a mince pie and found the last unoccupied table, squeezed against the window between a group of squabbling children and four pensioners with their wheeled shopping bags. Over the speakers, Slade was singing about Christmas and looking to the future. She wiped sugar and coffee off the table with a paper napkin and when she spotted Ben coming out of the changing room she raised her hand so he’d find her.

And she had to catch her breath.

The man she’d chosen to share her life with was coming towards her through the crowded room. In his hands he cradled a child with his hair and his eyes, their dream come true.

Had she been afraid of Ben loving someone more than he loved her? This was
miraculous
.

Swiftly, holding the baby safe against him, he leaned over and kissed her on the lips. She took it like a breath of sweet air.

‘Happy Christmas, love,’ he said and just as quickly as he’d kissed her, he deposited the baby in her arms.

Her body adjusted to hold him by itself. His legs were curled up like the tops of grace notes, and his body was more solid than Claire had expected. She touched his cheek, his
soft glorious cheek, and he turned his head. His dark eyes looked straight into her. He fitted against her breast as if he’d always been meant to be there. She saw how his hair whorled around his forehead, how his lips puckered out.

‘He’s so beautiful,’ she said.

‘He needs his mother. We both do.’

A little person, wholly new. It was the busiest part of the year but she had nothing to do but to hold him, nowhere else to be but right here and right now. He looked up at her and he knew her and she knew him.

She was in love, in all its danger and its wonder.

‘Matthew,’ she said. ‘His name is Matthew.’

Posie was riding on Jarvis’s shoulders, so Romily was rolling their suitcase along behind them. The London train was going to be crowded but they weren’t in a hurry and Posie was singing a song of her own invention about reindeer and motorcycles, and it was making Jarvis laugh. Neither of them saw Claire and Ben and the baby through the window of the café, but Romily did.

Claire was holding the baby. She was stroking his cheek with one finger. Ben sat close. His world was no larger than his wife and his child. The pane of glass between them and Romily reflected a galaxy’s worth of twinkling fairy-lights.

Through the window, Claire said something unheard, and Ben nodded. They did not glance up to see Romily where she stood not two feet distant.

Romily looked, but she did not pause. She caught up with the other two and slipped her free hand inside the pocket of Jarvis’s coat, where it was warm. He put his hand inside with hers.

Dear Matthew,

Romily says that I should write you letters even though you can’t read yet. I think this is a little silly because you’re never going to forget me even if I’m away for the whole summer, but then she said that you could read them when you were older and it would help you remember things that happened when you were a baby and were too young to make proper memories.

So anyway, this is what happened today. We had a Bon Voyage picnic in our back garden at the flat. Bon Voyage is French and it means good journey – it’s a nice thing to say to people before they go on a trip. You were sitting on a blue blanket on the grass and I made you a daisy chain and put it around your neck and you laughed. Do you remember that, now that I’ve written it? You poured your beaker of water over your head and Uncle Ben had to change you, and then I let you try a bit of the cake that Auntie Claire had made specially and you got it all down your front. Claire pretended she was cross but she wasn’t.

Grown-ups say that pretending is just for children but they pretend things all the time even when they know that nobody believes them. Mrs Kapoor says you should
always give examples when you are trying to prove something and my example is this morning when I got up and Jarvis was pretending that he’d arrived at the flat really early, when any fool could tell he had been there all night. I have counted that he has done this four times that I have noticed. I don’t mind. I like it, actually, and so does Romily because she is smiling a lot.