Lullaby (14 page)

‘Blimey, Jess, don’t go getting all silly on me now.’ But he chucked my chin just like our dad used to.

I blushed. ‘I’m not. Tough as old boots, you know me.’ I took another sip of vodka to steady myself. ‘I still don’t understand why you’ve been hiding out for so long, Rob.’

‘I haven’t. I’ve just—I’ve been away.’

‘You mean—’

‘No, not that kind of away. Away away. Abroad away.’

‘You’d better ring Mum. She’s been worried sick.’

‘I have now. Now I’m—not away.’

‘I bet she was pleased.’

‘You could say that.’

I struggled with an envy I’d known since Robbie first came home from hospital in my mother’s ecstatic arms. A boy at last—just like she’d always wanted. She’d never forgiven me for not being one, that’s what I’d always thought.

‘So, where was abroad?’ I asked after a pause.

‘Asia mainly. Bit of South America, but mostly Asia. Thailand most recently. Bangkok’s a fucking banging city.’

I thought of sun and sea and exotic smells; of travellers and backpacks—a whole world I’d longed to explore. I thought of five-star Mauritian luxury—the furthest I’d ever been. The all-inclusive Mickey had insisted on when I was three months pregnant: the overwhelming opulence. We hadn’t been allowed to venture far out of the resort. All very nice, thank you, but not really my idea of travel. I’d been planning to see a bit of the world when I’d finished my art course. Another ambition thwarted by my unplanned pregnancy; another thing I’d initially been fed-up about-another nail now in the coffin of my tearing guilt. Now I’d happily live in a shoebox under Lewisham Bridge with Louis, never go anywhere ever again, if he could just come back. I stared at my brother.

‘And you didn’t think to let us know you were all right?’

He pulled heavily on his roll-up. It wilted pathetically in the heat.

‘I sent you a postcard, didn’t I?’

I snorted. ‘Yeah, right. One in five years. Thanks very much. Very reassuring. Most considerate. And how come you rang Mum and not me?’

‘When?’ He looked cagey, hunched his shoulders. I looked at him properly for the first time today. Despite the temperature outside he was still wearing the old leather jacket, sweating very slightly. Droplets skittered and beaded across his pale and clammy
forehead. I realised just how ill he looked, and I felt a surge of panic.

‘Robbie, why’ve you let this happen? We were always so—so—’ But I couldn’t finish the sentence. He was no better than my dad, no more reliable. There was a horrible pause. I felt us drifting from one another, like every blood connection had been severed long ago. I’d tried and tried to rein it in, but I had to recognise I’d failed. My life had gone one way and his—his went down the drain, it seemed. Down the drain to ‘fucking banging Bangkok’.

‘Jess,’ he said, then seemed to think better of it, and downed his whisky instead.

‘What?’ I encouraged. He wouldn’t look at me. ‘What were you going to say?’ I asked again, impatient now.

‘Nothing.’ The leather creaked as he ground out the roll-up, gave it up at last. Then, ‘Are you happy?’

‘Oh yeah, ecstatic. Never been happier. What do you think, you idiot?’

‘I don’t mean right now. I don’t mean since—since, you know, Luke got taken—’

‘Luke?’ I slid from the stool, my anger swelling. ‘Are you kidding me? You say you came because you’re concerned—but you don’t even know my baby’s name. You can’t even remember his name.’

Too late, he saw his mistake; grabbed my arm to stop me going. ‘Louis,’ he corrected hurriedly, ‘I meant Louis, of course. Sorry. Are you happy with Louis, you know, normally? And with your old man?’

I drained my drink, then I stepped up to him and took my brother’s clammy face in both my hands. I
looked right into his glazed eyes; they slid away from mine.

‘Rob, you’re wasted, aren’t you? Absolutely fucked. God,’ I dropped my hands in despair, ‘I didn’t realise how wasted till just now.’ I chewed my thumbnail, thinking on my feet. ‘Look, Robbie, I’m happy to help you, I’ll do anything I can—but only if you promise to help yourself too. Robbie?’

But he wouldn’t meet my eye again, just beckoned to the barman instead. So I turned away. I had to. I walked away from my brother, the baby who I had protected for so long, who didn’t want to help me but wanted something from me, despite my own desperation. As I passed back into the sunlight it blinded me, and I fished for my sunglasses again. I racked my brains to think what I might have that he needed. I really wished I knew.

I was halfway back up the hill before I changed my mind. I saw a woman with a pushchair a bit like mine ahead of me, and I started to stalk behind her. As she neared the heath, she stopped to let her toddler out to walk. He dropped something, his pink beaker, rolling into the gutter. The child wanted to retrieve it; the mother wouldn’t let him. He began to stamp his feet and squeal; she grabbed his arm too roughly and pulled him away so his knees dragged on the ground.

‘Hey!’

She stopped and turned, her brow knitted.

‘You’re hurting him,’ I said.

‘Oh yes? And what’s it got to do with you?’ She was
well-spoken, her clothes straight out of Boden. Her hands tightened on her handbag.

‘Everything. It’s everything to do with me. You should never hurt a child,’ I whispered. ‘You should be glad of what you have.’ I picked up the beaker and handed it to the tearful child. His warm little hand curled round the cup, and I resisted the temptation to scoop him up and run.

Instead, I turned around and ran back down into the village. Robbie was still skulking at the bus-stop on the other side of the road. I skidded to a halt before he could see me, stepped back into the doorway of Lloyds Bank opposite. The bus pulled up. I thought it would be too difficult to follow him, but he was at the head of the queue, and went straight upstairs. Panting in the sticky heat, I sprinted across the road and through the doors just before they closed. I curled up in the back corner of the lower deck.

The streets we travelled towards town were hot and noisy and thick with fumes. We passed the private gym Mickey and I belonged to, and I thought wistfully of the ice-blue pool. It was one extravagance I hadn’t argued with when Mickey added me to his membership. I loved swimming, was good at it—much better than my husband, who, cat-like, hated getting wet. I thought about how if Louis was with me now I’d probably have taken him there today to escape the heat; his little tummy swelling above his swimming nappy, clapping at the water, splashing and splashing with delight as I laughed, as he chortled at his own cleverness. My stomach lurched just like the bloody bus.

On the Walworth Road Robbie got off, and I plodded after him, dodging between big black women with bags crammed full of fruit and veg, around scrawny pensioners with skinny ankles and tartan shopping trolleys, thick coats on despite the burning sun. Eventually Robbie dropped down into an estate on the edge of Elephant and Castle, not all that far from where we grew up. Who did he know here these days? I dreaded to think. He crossed the kids’ playground, stopping to roll a fag; then he leant against the flaking yellow bars of the roundabout and made a call.

He waited, smoking. Five minutes later, a pretty young black boy with short dreads cycled up on a Chopper. He skirted Robbie, they laughed at something, and then Robbie jumped off the roundabout and walked with the boy, who lightly held my brother’s shoulder to keep his balance. I followed them until they reached a flat that was partially boarded-up, on the ground floor of the estate. A fat white man sat outside on a bashed-up deckchair that had seen better days, reading an old
Sunday Sport.

‘Stevo in?’ I heard the black boy call. The man shrugged, then jerked his thumb behind him.

‘Give him five minutes. Annette’s in there—if you know what I mean.’

Some manful leering followed, and I shuddered. A hairy bloke in a white vest rounded the block next to me, holding a pit-bull straining on a metal leash. My heart began to thud. The man carefully chose a spindly tree near me and threw a rubber ring onto a branch, began goading the dog to jump up and reach it.

An emaciated girl came out of the flat in a tiny skirt, zipping up a tracksuit top, her legs mottled and twig-like. She started laughing vacantly, blatantly wrecked, as she crashed into Deckchair Man.

‘All right, darling?’ He slapped her scrawny arse, leering at the other men—at my brother and his mate, but they’d lost interest now. They were heading into the flat themselves. Another youth approached; spotty and pale, he held himself as if he was freezing, shaking despite the heat.

I didn’t think that my baby was in there. I smelt the desperation in the stagnant air: I just knew they must have come for drugs. Behind me, the little dog was still throwing his thick body up at the ring, increasingly frantic to reach it.

I was about to slope away when a young black girl with braids rounded the corner of the block that flat was in. She was shaking her head in time to music from her earphones, pushing a new pram although she looked barely fourteen. I tensed; my heart began to drum so loudly I was surprised they couldn’t hear it. I strained to see the baby. But the pram was empty.

The girl was heading for the flat Robbie was in. Deckchair Man watched her approach, her ebony midriff taut and flat beneath her yellow bikini top and her gold chains, his fat pink tongue practically lolling on the ground amid the fag-butts and the Tennants Super cans. She disappeared into the stairwell; I heard her knock and the door crash shut behind her, and I began to run. I knew the baby was here—my baby. I ran faster than I’d ever run; as if my life depended on
it—as if Louis’s did. I sprinted past Deckchair Man.

‘Oi,’ he shouted, but I got to the door, a great metal plate, and I began to bang on it. I made two tight fists and I smashed them on that door, screaming my brother’s name, screaming my baby’s. My hand began to stream blood from my old cut. I kept on banging.

‘Robbie,’ I howled, ‘let me in, you fucker. I know Louis is in there. Let me bloody in.’

Deckchair Man lumbered up behind me just as I heard the bolts inside slide back. He seized my hand, my bleeding hand, as it went back to strike again—but then the door opened and my brother stood there, backlit by the sun streaming through the tiny toilet window behind him. He was framed in pure light like a saint depicted in stained glass. Like the Angel Gabriel in the Annunciation, I thought deliriously, about to deliver my baby to me. I held out my arms.

‘For Christ’s sake, Jess.’ He reached forward and grabbed my wrist. Then he saw the blood. ‘What the fuck have you done to her?’ he hissed in the other man’s face.

‘Nothing, it’s nothing,’ I moaned, launching myself forward, so I stumbled. ‘Is Louis here? Where’s Louis?’

Robbie slammed the door behind me, slammed it in the other man’s face. ‘Shut up, will you, you bloody nutter,’ he hissed at me now. ‘Pull yourself together.’

The black girl appeared in the hallway.

‘Where’s my baby?’ I panted, gasping for breath. ‘What have you done with my baby?’

She sucked her teeth at me. ‘You wanna take care who your bredren accusing,’ she spat at Robbie.

I broke free of my brother, pushing past the girl into the room at the end of the hallway. Some of the windows were draped with old bedspreads to keep the light out; two were boarded with planks of wood. There was no furniture at all, just a stack of boxed DVD players right up to the ceiling and an old mattress in the corner, filthy and stained. Music throbbed through the wall from next door—and the pram stood in the middle of the room. As I moved towards it, the girl brushed past me, holding something to her. Holding a baby—a lifeless little baby. I gagged; I moved towards her like I was sleep-walking. In her arms she held a doll. It was only a doll. The girl placed it very carefully in the pram, and covered it with a thin blanket.

I ran back out into the hall, and pushed on the other door that was closed. I could hear low voices, low beneath the music. The door opened a crack. The black boy sat on a bust-up old armchair; the skinny youth and a bloke with a peroxide Mohawk, all covered in tribal tattoos, shared a sofa so old they had both sunk down backwards into it, their four knees almost higher than their heads. The boy was lighting something made from an old Coke can, inhaling deeply, manically Like his life depended on it. A crack-pipe, I realised with a hollow thud. The youth had his eyes shut, scratching at his arm ferociously. The peroxide man looked at me and raised a dark eyebrow. He was preparing something in his lap.

‘Was that you doing all the shouting?’

‘I’m looking for my baby,’ I whispered.

‘Well, he ain’t here,’ he said calmly. ‘And you wanna keep your mouth shut. We’ll have the filth round here
with all that noise, and we don’t want that now, do we, love?’ I shook my head soundlessly. ‘So why don’t you fuck off now. Okay?’

Robbie came up behind me. ‘I think you better go, Jess.’

I slithered through his grasp, back to the pram.

‘I just want to know, why are you wheeling a doll around?’ I asked the girl, but I knew now she couldn’t help me. ‘Don’t you have a baby?’

She was getting ready to leave, slotting her stereo into delicate little ears that poked through her plaits. She stared at me, then she turned the doll over and unzipped its back. A long, fat slab of something black, almost chocolate-like, poked out between cotton-wool stuffing.

‘A bit of blow for the boys, all right, nosey-parker? And you wanna keep your questions to yourself, ras. Know what I’m saying?’ She sucked her teeth again, and tucked her doll back in very carefully. Almost lovingly.

Robbie propelled me to the door.

‘Come with me,’ I pleaded. ‘This is a hell-hole, Rob, and you know it.’ My eyes filled with tears, I grabbed his hand. It was very cold. ‘You don’t belong here. Come and stay with me if you want. Please don’t stay here. I could use the company, you know.’

His eyes slid away from me. ‘I got some business to finish up,’ he said, very quietly. I felt the shame burning from his thin frame. But he wasn’t going to leave, he really wasn’t. He leant down and kissed my cheek. ‘I’ll call you, okay?’