Nest of Sorrows (35 page)

Melanie sighed. ‘You know I will. When can I see this brother of mine?’

‘Now. Right away. He’s only round the corner, and I’ve written a note so that you can identify yourself as his sister.’

‘I see. All prepared, aren’t you? What happened to my scatterbrained mother?’ She waited a few moments, her eyes glued to Kate’s face. ‘Is he pretty?’

‘All Caesarians are pretty. They don’t get squashed on the way out.’

‘Prettier than . . . than I was?’

Kate grinned. Here came the child again. ‘No. You were utterly gorgeous. Look at all the pictures on my walls.’

The girl swallowed a little sob. ‘I wish you would come home. Come home and live like a proper family.’

‘I don’t belong with a proper family.’

‘But . . . but Michael does.’

Kate nodded wisely. ‘Exactly what your father would say. In court, Mel. He will try to take my child away from me. A baby needs its mother. You had me right up to this year, now it’s Michael’s turn.’

‘OK.’ The voice was very small and hurt. ‘I’ll go and see him, then.’ She rose from the chair, clutching the gift of nightdresses to her chest as if it were something really special. ‘I still think you’re wrong, Mum.’

‘I’m glad you have opinions, Mel. But let me stick to my beliefs. All right?’

They hugged one another tightly, then Kate stood at the door and watched the young back disappearing through the gateway. ‘Please, Mel,’ she whispered between gritted teeth. ‘Don’t let me down. For God’s sake, don’t let me down!’

The baby needed fresh air. All babies needed fresh air, and the back yard just wasn’t big enough. Apart from which, Kate felt she had imposed enough on the two loyal Misses and on the upstairs tenants. Michael didn’t often cry, but when he did, it was with feeling, volume and enthusiasm. He got plenty of outings at the weekends, when Steve and Mark would drive everyone out to the moors in their car, but weekdays were becoming a gigantic problem.

Then there was herself to consider. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, food or exercise. The lack of sleep was Michael’s fault, while food was no longer attractive. But the absence of exercise was due solely to her fear of discovery. Perhaps if she got some good walking in, she might enjoy her food. After all, daily points had to be balanced; a coma could well be achieved by too few calories measured against her insulin dose.

Kate was tense. Part of this anxiety was attributable to her concern for others in the building, particularly for the poor couple who lived up the servants’ stairs. They had not complained, but they were certainly missing out on their full eight hours each night. Most of her tension, though, was caused by new motherhood and her very mixed feelings towards her young charge. Life was a constant round of drudgery; feed him, clean him, clean up after him; soak the nappies, wash the nappies, boil, hang out to drip; empty the bottle, wash the bottles sterilize, fill up again; scrub the teats, salt the teats, soak them in Milton.

She became a zombie after a while; the flat was her tomb and she walked around it like the living dead. A secondhand television was acquired by Steve, and she gazed upon this endlessly, sitting with the baby over her shoulder and staring at the picture until it shrivelled into a tiny dot at the end of each transmission. She knew nothing of what she had ‘watched’. Things were rapidly approaching the stage where she might really need a Dr Coakley to look into what was left of her mind.

The flat was turning into a mess. There was a permanent look to the wooden airing maiden that surrounded the fireplace. Two lidded buckets in the kitchen were constantly filled by soiled linen and nappy cleanser. The baby’s cot took up a lot of spare space by her bed, while his pram sat where Boothroyd had used to live, in the alcove by the window. Her work now covered the dining table in the kitchen, and although she had managed not to fall behind, she had little in hand for newspaper and comic strip.

Michael was dominating her life, taking away energy, personality, drive, ambition. She wanted nothing for herself, because she was no longer a person. Kate Saunders had been reduced to a mere appendage of this newborn man. How easy it was. Perhaps this would go on for years, perhaps this was how it had started with Dora.

Sometimes, Kate couldn’t quite manage to like her son. He had Geoff’s eyes for a start, very dark and oval in shape. He screamed and was always hungry, yet he never finished a feed properly. She did not know how to stop the screaming, especially that six o’clock knees-up-to-the-chest-I’ve-got-colic yelling. It was a six o’clock episode that finally made her snap. Although it was a winter evening, and in spite of all the warnings about premature babies and fog, she bundled him into a dozen layers, shoved him in the pram, then stalked out of the house.

After that, their relationship improved no end. She was up at five every morning, and by six-thirty, come rain, hail or snow, she and Michael were out on the road. By eight, both would be exhausted and hungry, so she would eat her points of toast and diabetic jam while he guzzled his bottle. When the washing was done, they shared the bed and slept until lunchtime. He thrived on this strange treatment. Once or twice, when the crying was really bad, she even pushed him out in the dead of night, whispering to him about stars and frost. In the pram, he was always good, but she would not take him out in proper daylight unless she was in Steve’s car. If anyone saw her, the secret would be out before she achieved her escape to Liverpool.

Maureen still did the shopping, arriving almost every tea-time with fruit and veg, meat and bread, SMA baby milk and all the other necessities. She also undertook to drive Kate and Michael to evening surgeries, so that diabetes and infancy might be properly monitored. One evening a week, Maureen paid a proper social call, having told Phil that she was taking an evening class in Spanish. They sat by the coal fire, Maureen cooing over the baby as she gave him his bottle.

Kate leaned forward. ‘What’ll your husband say when he finds out you don’t know any Spanish?’

‘I’ll tell him I was thick at it. He won’t be surprised. But it’s better than admitting I’m seeing you, isn’t it? Geoff’s convinced you’ve moved on now, especially after the Misses acted daft on your behalf and redirected that pile of mail to Edgeford.’

Kate nodded. ‘They’ve been good friends, lying for me like that. Amazing how much these so-called old maids understand about life.’

‘Good sorts. I still think you’re crazy, though. This little one could have his own nursery back in Edgeford.’

Kate sniffed loudly. ‘And Dora crowing over him and turning him into a nancy.’

‘Shut up!’ There was anger in Maureen’s tone. ‘You’re running off with one of those.’

‘Steve’s no nancy!’ Kate’s eyes were flashing ominously. ‘If Geoff had been half the man Steve is . . . Oh, you wouldn’t understand. Sexual preferences have little to do with true manhood, I can assure you.’

Maureen wiped the baby’s chin and placed the bottle in the hearth. ‘What about your mother?’

‘What about her?’

‘Aren’t you going to tell her where you’re going?’

‘No.’

‘That’s cruel, Kate. I saw her on the market last week, and she looked worn to a shadow. Talk to her. Tell her about her grandson.’

‘Her grandson was aborted,’ whispered Kate.

‘But . . .’

‘Stop this, Maureen!’ Kate jumped to her feet. ‘It’s hard enough being post-natal and alone without having my only visitor nagging at me once a week.’

‘Sorry.’

‘The only thing I know is that I can’t go back. Michael and I don’t belong there. I don’t know much else and I’m not good for anything at the moment, but I’m not going back.’

Maureen placed the dozing infant over her shoulder and began to rub his back gently. ‘OK. Calm down.’

‘I’ve been close to giving in, I can tell you. Some nights, I’ve been an inch away from using the Misses’ phone to call my mother. But I never gave in to the urge, no matter how lonely I felt. She cursed me for having an abortion that might have saved my life . . .’

‘An abortion you never had anyway, and thank goodness, because he’s lovely. Aren’t you lovely?’ She gazed at the baby now. ‘And I never guessed you were coming, Michael, not till Mammy told me. And Mammy’s going to have to do her own shopping for a while, ’cos Auntie Maureen’s car’s on its last wheels . . .’

‘Oh dear,’ interrupted Kate. ‘What if I’m seen by anyone who knows me?’

‘Wear dark glasses and a scarf.’

‘Middle of winter? That would be enough to make anyone take a closer look. It’ll have to be Steve. I’ll get him to run out to the shops for me.’

Maureen paced up and down with Michael while Kate began to tackle the seemingly endless pile of ironing. ‘Good boy,’ crooned Maureen. ‘Get that nasty wind up. Who’s a clever little lad? Your daddy would have loved you, yes he would. Hey, Kate?’

‘Hello?’

‘Don’t depend too much on this Steve Collins.’

Kate banged the iron on to its asbestos rest. ‘Why not? He got me the interview, found me the bloody job. And he’s arranged for the lady next door to mind Michael while I’m at school. Seems a very dependable sort to me.’

Maureen coughed quietly. ‘But . . . but what if he wants his boyfriend to move in? Won’t you feel de trop?’

‘No more so than if I lived with a married couple. Your ideas are so quaint, Maureen. I must do a Boothroyd cartoon of you and Geoff, the original Victorian pair. Yes, you should have married my husband.’

‘I’m not Victorian! I like the men too much to be Victorian!’

Kate nodded. ‘Ah, yes, but that’s the essence of Victorianism. Sex mad, they were, but their minds were closed in public. Geoff’s a dirty old man underneath all those folded shirts and starched hankies. And you’re a manhunter, though you pretend to be respectable.’

Maureen’s mouth fell open. ‘Good God! Will all this go in your cartoons? Depravity behind the doors of middle-class suburbia?’

‘Abso-bloody-lutely.’

Maureen placed the sleeping infant in his cot. ‘Well. There’s my Spanish lesson over. I’m not hanging about to be analysed by you.’ She kissed Kate’s cheek hurriedly. ‘I’ll have to watch what I say in future.’

Kate laughed. ‘Especially about the dentist and the young Reverend.’

‘Eh?’

‘Oh, never mind. Just something you let slip in a moment of stress.’

‘Will it be taken down and used in evidence?’

‘Depends.’

‘What on?’

‘Keep your gob shut!’

Michael had been a November baby; he therefore began to be interesting in about March of 1969. Until then, he had been something of a pudding, rather like a bowl of rice that soaked up milk however many times you tried to thin the mixture.

It was almost moving time; the Crosby house was now vacated and everyone had been over to have a look and to grab rooms. Michael was to have the smallest bedroom at the front, while Kate had been allocated the larger front bedroom. Steve – and Mark when he chose to visit – would sleep in the back bedroom next door to the bathroom.

It was a corner house, with large side and front gardens, then a triangular wedge of concrete at the back, so small that it would be necessary to have a rotary washing line. There were two living rooms, one for Steve, the other for Kate and Michael, though the relationship between these three was becoming so close that there promised to be little real segregation.

Kate was packing boxes while her son lolled against pillows on the floor. ‘You’ll have to be good for Mrs Melia,’ she said to him. ‘Mrs Melia likes children, so don’t start putting her off for life. Pardon? Oh, I see. Where am I going? I’m going to work, child. At a school in Kirkby, a special school for children with problems. What did you say? No, not that sort of problem, not your sort. They don’t have difficult mothers, not all of them. They’ve illnesses that make them slower than you.’ She leaned forward and twisted the mobile she had made out of coat hangers, ribbons and bells. ‘Just be good while I’m out, that’s all I ask.’

He giggled and slipped off the pillows, so she bent to pick him up. ‘We have a serious dilemma here, Mike. I love you so much, I could burst. If we’re not very careful, I shall turn out like Dotty Dora. I won’t let the girls near you. I won’t! I won’t!’ She tossed him into the air and he chuckled loudly.

It was then, as she played with her beloved child, that the back door opened. Kate stiffened and clutched the infant to her breast. ‘Who . . . who is it?’

Rachel Bottomley stepped into the room, her eyes widening with shock and confusion as she took in all the paraphernalia; cot, pram, airing maiden. And finally, the child. ‘Katherine?’

‘Go . . . go away.’

‘Katherine. I’ve brought it. The letter to say I’m sorry. I wrote it last night . . .’

‘Leave it on top of the television. I’ll read it later.’

Rachel hesitated for a fraction of a second. ‘But . . . but we thought you were in Manchester. Miss Brandon said you’d moved to a school at Withington.’

‘Then how did you find me?’

Rachel swallowed, her face a picture of disbelief and trauma. ‘Arthur, he saw you putting your milk bottle on the front step last night. He’d been to a committee meeting at the Conservative club. So I . . . wrote the letter and here I am.’

‘We can all see that.’

There followed a small silence, during which the older woman staggered forward several paces. ‘But . . . but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘The baby . . . ?’

‘I’m minding him for somebody. For a sick friend.’

Rachel’s eyes swept over the room once more. Her voice wavered when she spoke again. ‘She must have been ill a while, then.’

Kate sighed and raised her face to heaven. ‘She’s been sick for months. Months and months. The poor girl was teetering on the brink of coma when young Michael here was born.’

Rachel Bottomley seemed to shrink by several inches as the message finally took root in her brain. It couldn’t be! Yet it had to be, must be! Sweet Jesus, what had Katherine done now? All by herself too, no help, no support either actual or moral. She cowered, cringing back from this new knowledge about her daughter’s true strength of character. Did she know Katherine? Did she really know her own daugher? Who was Katherine if she could cope with such enormity while completely alone? ‘He’s yours!’