Lullaby (21 page)

‘Is it cos he can be a bit moody?’ I tried. She lined her receipts up very neatly. They seemed neat, anyway. It was quite hard to tell in my current state.

‘Cos he’s rich?’

Her face was thunderous now. ‘Do me a favour. You can keep his money.’ But I’d got her goat now. ‘In fact, it’s gotta be the other way round, don’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s
you
who’s landed on your feet.’

‘What are you insinuating, Shirl?’ I was outraged.

‘Nothing.’

‘I mean, if anything, I’d rather Mickey was poor.’

‘Oh pull the other one.’

But it was true. Mickey’s wealth made me anxious and beholden. I’d been used to having nothing most of my life; I was used to earning my own crust. Blearily I changed the subject before we had a row.

‘Is it cos he’s so bright?’

‘No, Jessica, if you really want to know, it’s because he doesn’t love you the right way. Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?’

‘Oh.’ I deflated like a geriatric balloon. ‘That’s not very nice, is it?’ I drained my glass. ‘What do you mean—right?’ I began to feel like I was falling. According to the mirror opposite, I was still upright. Just about.

‘Right. I jus’ mean right. All right? You need a man who loves you for what you are, not what he wan’ you to be. Not what you think you should be for him.
You change, man, around that Mickey. You know that. You’re not yourself at all. Now leave it, Jess, please. Before we have some words.’

‘But—what do you mean, “change”?’

‘Jus’ change. Not yourself. Too—deferential. Nervous. An’ you know, you’re a good-looking girl, you’re beautiful, but you don’ seem to know it. Any man worth his salt make you feel special, you know?’

‘Oh,’ I said again. Fourteen Shirls sat on the sofa now, weaving back and forth.

‘Yeah—oh. I jus’ wanna see you with a man who loves you for the fabulous person I know you are. Not all these—misfits for you. All these stupi’ older men.’ She got up, shaking her skirt out. ‘You got a father complex, you know that, don’t you?’

God knows why, I thought. I tried the one-eye trick again; apparently, it didn’t work.

‘And don’t you go getting ideas about that tasty copper, either.’

‘What?’ I couldn’t believe my ears. I couldn’t actually focus any more. ‘Tha’s rubbish. How dare you.’ I tried to conjure up some venom.

‘I seen you, lady. I seen the way you looked at him the other day. Don’t go there, Jess. That’s the last thing you need.’ She headed to the door. ‘I’m going to bed, babe. I think you should too. You’ve had enough. You’re going to feel rough in the morning.’ She said ‘rough’ like a dog bark. Then she turned back. ‘And remember, tomorrow is a new day. Forget the men. Tomorrow they could find Louis, yeah? I got a good feeling, you know.’

I nodded, mumbled something incoherent, slumping down on the sofa. I fell into a twitchy weird half-sleep where Mickey and a faceless Agnes were doing waltzes down our hall, and Kurt Cobain sang barefoot on the stairs, holding Louis in his arms. Something niggled me even in my drunken dream, and I couldn’t think what…Then Deb woke me accidentally.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she stage-whispered, ‘I was just coming to say I’m off now.’

I held my head in my hands; it was spinning so much I thought it might whiz right off. I (almost) realised how drunk I was. ‘Deb,’ I asked politely when the room slowed down a bit, ‘can you take me to the hospital?’

‘Sure. First thing tomorrow.’

‘No. Now.’

‘Now?’ she repeated. She tried and failed not to look annoyed.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said brightly, ‘I’ll drive myself.’

I rarely drove. Even the idea of the expensive Audi Mickey had bought me made me rather nervous. I thought of Shirl’s words—of giving up control. I vowed to drive it more. Then I had a great idea.

‘Or no, I know what, I’ll cycle to the hospital. I’ve won competitions, you know. On my bike. Nice night for it.’

And I had, in my teens. Right now, though, I couldn’t have cycled round the block. So, of course, she drove me in the end—good old valiant Deb.

In the corridor outside the ICU, a young woman with a shaved head was pushing a buggy rather manically towards me. It was a Maclaren, just like mine.
Perhaps it was my Louis. Then I looked at the woman’s face; she was sobbing. And the baby wasn’t mine, of course; he was thin and fair, not fat and dark like my beautiful Louis. Poor lady; she didn’t look happy at all. I shook my head sorrowfully. Most drunkenly.

Mickey was asleep when I got into his room. All this innocent sleep of angels, while I worried myself to death. I woke him up too roughly; I hurt him by mistake.

‘Sorry, darling.’ I was still slurring. ‘Blimey, you were well away, weren’t you?’

He took a moment to come round, rubbing the sleep from his good eye. He sized me up. ‘I’m not the only one, I’d say.’

‘What?’

‘Not the only one who’s well away.’

‘Oh, I see.’ I laughed—though I wasn’t quite sure what the joke was. He was about to continue, but I had to get it out now or not at all.

‘Mickey,’ I asked, ‘why’ve you been seeing your ex?’

He looked confused. His eyes were glittering manically.

‘Don’t lie to me, please,’ I said. ‘I thought you hated Agnes.’

‘I do,’ he said, but I didn’t believe him any more. I began to cry; big body-racking sobs. I never cried in front of him.

‘Oh darlin’,’ he said, taking my arm, pulling me down to him. He never called me darling. ‘I don’t like her very much,’ he whispered, ‘and that’s the truth.’ Then he kissed me gently on the mouth, and I felt that little
shift inside, that Mickey feeling I could never escape. I kissed him back. I wanted to climb on the bed and bury myself inside him. I craved some kind of intimacy, any intimacy, now the closeness I’d had with Louis was gone. The sheer human warmth of holding my son—all gone. I moved against Mickey, and he groaned; more with pain than desire, I guessed hazily.

‘I love you, Mickey,’ I said, squinting down at him. If I looked through one eye I could focus better. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been weird.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘So what? Aren’t I allowed to say it ever? Does it bloody scare you so much? You are the father of my child.’ Hurt, I moved back, but he grabbed my wrist in his cool, thin fingers, pulling me down to him, and kissed me some more. My insides went all liquid. His eyes still glittered like disco mirror-balls, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was quite there with me, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to obliterate the pain I felt.

‘Do you reckon anyone’s ever done it in Intensive Care before?’ I whispered, and he half-smiled.

‘I don’t know, Jessica. What do you think?’

I climbed up on the bed, pushing my skirt aside, straddling him. I dared not move too much in case I set the machines off bleeping. I rocked above him. I was thinking, while I could still think coherently, that this was what had always tied me to him, this thing that Shirl and all the others never saw, this urgent, hungry want. Though since Louis was born I’d been scared to come too near him very often, frightened by all the change.

And then I suddenly saw myself, as if I was hanging on the ceiling like a bat, watching me and my injured husband on the bed. What the hell was I playing at? I was giving into drunken lust like a drunken fool, while out there, somewhere out there in this sultry summer night, someone had my baby, was holding
my
baby while I just forgot him. No matter that I was desperate for any intimacy that Mickey could afford me now; I needed to focus on my son—on just my son. And I stopped stock-still, wide-eyed with horror at myself, at the indignity of my act, and I was utterly ashamed. I clambered down clumsily, far quicker than I’d got up. I straightened my clothes and pushed back my hair and prayed that no one had seen. I prayed that Louis hadn’t sensed that, wherever he was, I’d forgotten myself just for a moment there.

Mickey whispered something and I couldn’t quite hear it above the buzz and tick of the dim-lit room. I leant down to him and asked him to repeat it.

‘I said,’ and Mickey was panting now, ghost-like beneath the still-livid bruises, ‘I said I never meant to hurt you, darling,’ and he pushed my hair back from my face, kissing my mouth once more, only this time I stepped back because now the kiss felt wrong. But I did feel the effort that this all cost him and I clutched onto his hand. I wished vehemently that Mickey was better now; that he could get up and walk out of here with me, that he would help me look for our son. That together we would find our baby who needed us so badly.

And then, eerily, it struck me that Mickey was actually
saying goodbye. There was a nasty sheen of sweat across his cold, cold body. Had I just nearly shagged him into relapse, I thought, and I was about to say it out loud and laugh—but he was struggling to breathe and something started to whir and beep, and he was shaking—fitting, it seemed—and then Sister Kwame was there and I was truly horrified at what I’d done. I held his hand like I was hanging on for life and his eyes began to flicker closed, and then he was out, and I was saying desperately, ‘He will be all right, won’t he? He’s going to be okay? Have I killed him?’ but I didn’t like the way her jaw was set so grim and she ignored me.

The weather broke that night and I nearly broke along with it. I sat by Mickey’s bed, clutching his hand, while they paged the small-eared consultant, who turned up very quickly, all bleary-eyed and mussy like he’d been sleeping in the broom cupboard, and they started to speak a bit like they do in
ER
, though not so fast and not so glamorous, and they said ‘theatre’ a lot, and I understood they might have to do something urgent to Mickey. Soon after that they rushed him off and left me there, bereft once more; worrying I’d hurt my husband, sapped him of his life-blood somehow.

And I went outside because they said, over distracted shoulders, that it might be a while, and so I sat in the hospital’s entrance, beneath the neon signs; sat in the stark fluorescent light among the fag-butts and the nutters, and I watched the rain begin.

My brain was rattling like an Intercity train, and I
had this image of Mickey’s Noddy consultant conducting an orchestra of nurses in the operating room, a scalpel for a baton, and I wondered why they called it theatre, was it all just a big game, a fantasy, to them; and then I thought I must still be drunk to think like this, and when some old lady with blood-stained fingers and a bashed-up Crocodile Dundee-type hat without the corks offered me her meths wrapped in brown paper, I didn’t know whether to swig or cry, but I thanked her anyway as I said no.

And I realised that Mickey hadn’t really answered my question, that I wasn’t any wiser about Agnes, but the fact that we’d nearly had sex must make everything all right—mustn’t it? And then I cursed myself because that was how eighteen-year-olds thought, not responsible married women with babies—missing or not-and then I thought I might start to howl, so I went back in the hospital and found the Ladies. I scrubbed my hands and face even though I was already soaking from the rain.

The strip lighting above me hummed and flicked as I stood staring at myself, lost soul, my face all ghostly in the mirror, and I realised I didn’t know where I should go. Should I stay here and wait for Mickey to come out of theatre; should I go home—Agnes’s home—and wait for Louis to come back? I fingered the new mobile phone that Deb had sorted out for me, and I thought of whom to call, and I didn’t have an answer. I paced the corridor in front of the big board that declared where each ward was. My eye fell on the words
‘Maternity Suite’;
it was apparently on the third floor.
I walked into the lift and pressed number three; moved like a marionette, controlled by a higher force, pulled by invisible threads to where the babies were.

Outside the Delivery Suite an anxious father with very ginger hair talked quietly into an illicit mobile phone, pacing the well-worn lino that a hundred fathers must pace each week. Of course I knew this part of the hospital would be well-protected—all buzzers and intercoms to get through and guarded desks and babies who were kept safely locked behind closed doors. But then a doctor slammed through the doors of the Neonatal Unit, there was some kind of crisis going on and somehow I managed to slip in behind. The harsh smell of disinfectant grabbed me round the throat as I stood at the glass; I pressed my nose up against that window like a small child outside a sweetshop and stared and stared at the tiny little bodies in their plastic beds, at all the wires, and my stomach somersaulted over and over again at the thought of what I’d lost. At the thought of the precarious hold on life these babies had; the utter vulnerability that had terrified me so much when Louis was first born and spent the first twenty-four hours in an incubator himself, the dependence that had astonished me. The fact that they relied on someone else for their first breath, for every sip and mouthful, every tiny bit of safe-keeping. And I found myself wondering how I could get into the room where the healthy babies were, the ones that didn’t need all this constant medical care?

A woman stepped up behind me.

‘They’re so tiny, aren’t they? So very helpless,’ I said, sort of to myself.

‘You’d be surprised. They’re survivors, babies. Tough-little things.’ But I heard the desperation in her words. I looked at her. Eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, she was pale and thin, wearing a huge cardigan despite the heat, twisting a hanky in her knotty hands. ‘That’s my John-John there.’ She pointed at a tiny form, rather kitten-like in the corner incubator, a big blue light above him, a small fluffy bear watching him sleep.

‘Is he okay?’

‘We,’ she swallowed, ‘we don’t know yet. We just keep praying that he’ll hang on in there. He was so terribly early. Twenty-six weeks. But, like I said,’ she attempted a smile and it nearly smashed my heart again, ‘he’s a little fighter.’ She was hanging on to hope so fervently that it was palpable.

Inconsolable: the word inched into my head. I felt her gaze fall on my face now. She’d be inconsolable if something happened, it was obvious. If someone took her child away. Some God—or some madwoman. Some madwoman—just like me.