On Loving Josiah (6 page)

Then they all made as if to go, Dr Fothering too, until Eve took hold of his hand and said, ‘No, Michael, not you! You stay here with us! You’re Josiah’s godfather!’

Dr Fothering sat back down on the bed, defeated, bent double. Eve took his hand in hers.

‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ she said, kindly.

‘There’ll be an inquiry,’ mumbled Dr Fothering.

‘Let them inquire all they like! Nosey Parkers. If the worst comes to the worst, you can move in with us.’

Dr Fothering looked at her. Utterly ravishing, and quite, quite mad.

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I’d like that.’

ROGER BOLT
was a man who held his head high among our nation’s foot-soldiers, whose shoulders bore many a burden and whose mind shunned chaos. He had a beard, which he clipped twice a day, and a trouser-press in his bedroom. He’d deserted his wife and children five years ago when he’d taken up the post in Cambridge: or at least, they had refused to follow him there, for everyone in Darlington knew that everyone in Cambridge was stuck-up, and stories were rife of nice, bright kids who’d gone to University there and were too lofty nowadays even to speak to their parents. ‘It’s not for the likes of us,’ his wife had insisted. ‘There are people even in Cambridge who need help,’ Roger had told her. ‘It’s good for my career, you’re not holding me back.’ And she didn’t.

Roger found it surprisingly easy to live alone. Of course, he missed his two small children, but he went back home at least once a month and what with bank holidays and such-like he was with them at least six weeks a year. But Roger’s real love was his work. He wanted to get to the very top. He wanted to prove himself.

Being a good social worker is rather like being a good housewife. It’s about cleaning up mess, efficiently and without fuss. It is about compartmentalizing, making lists and putting things in boxes. But as I have already made clear, Eve was always going to refuse to step into her box, or indeed anyone else’s. Roger understood this
implicitly
and knew he was going to do battle with her, and it was a battle he was going to win. After all, there was a new-born baby to
consider
. And his greatest fantasy was this: letting Dr Michael Fothering
know, in a very professional letter, of course, that Eve’s baby had been placed with foster parents. Let the true father step forward! So much more subtle, he considered, (chuckling to himself ) than any insinuating communications to his superiors. He would win this battle, as surely as night follows day, and win it with honours.

After Bolt’s visit to the hospital, he decided to lie low for a while. After all, Eve would be inundated with other visitors: the midwife would be calling in every day, the health visitor, the psychiatric nurse. Newborn babies were very precious commodities, after all.

Then, after about ten days, Bolt received an alarming letter from the midwife. She had called by at the Nelson’s house every day since the family returned home after the birth, but had found no one there. Neither Fulbright Hospital nor the health visitor had heard from Mr or Mrs Nelson, but did he happen to know whether the family were staying with Eve’s parents or another relative? Could he, perhaps, throw any light on the matter? Bolt had Eve’s parental address on his files, but no phone number, and when he discovered it wasn’t listed, he decided to take the matter into his own hands. Eve would never have chosen to go back to the parental home anyway, she loathed her mother. Far more likely they had gone up to Hull to stay with Fothering! But this was for the police to infer, not him. A professional distance from such a sordid matter as this was the key, no finger would ever, ever be pointed at him. Nonetheless he might just allow himself the pleasure of a good old-fashioned snoop, and dangle any clues he might find under their slow-witted noses. He determined to go to their house that very afternoon.

He veritably jumped into his Morris Minor at two o’clock, patting his briefcase on the seat beside him and stroking his newly-clipped beard. It was going to be difficult to resist the temptation to break in; but walking round to the back of the house seemed a legitimate intrusion. In fact, as he drove along he hit upon a rather good plan: just in case the family was hiding inside, he was going to spring
upon them unawares. He would park a couple of hundred yards up the road, and see if he could find a route through the fields running along the back of the houses of Woolfson Drive. No, neither cowpat nor gorse bush could deter Bolt now: he was on the warpath.

But man of the world though he was, or considered himself to be, nothing could have prepared him for the sight which greeted him. The baby, or so it seemed to him at a distance of thirty yards, was dead. It had been discarded on the top of a heap of grass-cuttings, completely naked, its little hands set in rigor mortis like starfish. He let out a cry in spite of himself (he rarely let his emotions get the better of him): ‘The baby! The baby!’ and he realised at once that there would be a lengthy and miserable inquiry and that his job would be on the line.

When the baby actually began to move Roger Bolt became almost hysterical; and when Gibson came out of his greenhouse and scooped up the baby in one large hand, he started shouting at him, even calling him a murderer though somewhere in his psyche he was entirely cognizant of the fact that no, the baby was not dead, because dead babies do not move. Thereupon Josiah began to cry, and Gibson was tense with anguish – not anger, for Gibson was too humble ever to feel angry, and when Bolt had calmed down a little, and had even (to his credit) managed to apologize, he explained that the midwife, the health visitor and various others had been most concerned about his family, particularly the baby, because newborn babies needed caring for, and being left on a heap of grass-cuttings was negligent to say the least. When Gibson said nothing in reply, Bolt suggested that he hand the baby over to him, but Gibson was now rocking Josiah on his large forearm, and the baby, if not asleep, was calm and looking about him quite happily.

Bolt tried another tack. ‘You’ve not been in this fortnight,’ he said. ‘Have you been staying with relations?’  

Gibson didn’t answer him. The men were still about ten yards
apart from each other, but when Bolt moved a step forward, Gibson involuntarily took a step back.

‘Where’s Eve?’ asked Bolt. ‘Is she here?’

Gibson shook his head.

‘Will she be long?’

Gibson shrugged his shoulders.

‘Is everything going well? She’s still living with you?’

Gibson just stared at him.

‘I really should take a look at the baby,’ said Roger.

Gibson didn’t move.

‘Do you often leave your baby on a pile of compost?’ And when Gibson didn’t answer him, he tried again, ‘No doubt it’s difficult having a new baby in the house.’

The two men drifted into a mutual, mute deadlock. The silence was broken by a cry from Josiah, as welcome as summer thunder, though the rains in this instance consisted of pee running down his father’s fingers. But Gibson was no less uncomfortable with pee than he was with manure, and when Bolt suggested he might like to dress the baby and put him in a nappy, he merely surveyed Bolt quizzically.

‘The baby’s nappy,’ Bolt reiterated, mentally taking notes.

Gibson stayed exactly where he was, for he was a man used to standing still, and he might have stayed there all day had Josiah himself not wailed rather more vociferously. Without a word, Gibson turned towards his kitchen door. Bolt followed him, as welcome as a cockroach.

‘So where’s Eve?’ Bolt asked his back, for Gibson’s back could scarcely be any less forthcoming than his front. Once in the narrow galley kitchen, Gibson rinsed a dirty bottle in the sink and made up his son’s milk formula, all the while magically cradling the lad in the crook of his left arm.

‘I can see you’re quite adept at this sort of thing’, proffered Bolt,
‘but has anyone ever told you how to sterilize bottles? And shouldn’t you be washing your hands?’

Gibson filled the washing-up bowl with warm water. Now, if he had been alone, he would have talked to his son, because even the presence of Bolt in his kitchen did not quite drown out the song of the nightingale in his garden. He would have said, ‘Hark that, Jo, there’s a nightingale for you,’ and he would have laid his child in the bowl and splashed the water over his belly, and he would have told him how the nightingale was a bird of paradise flown down from heaven to greet him this June morning.

But Josiah’s bath was perfunctory that morning, no tender coos, no nursery rhymes; Josiah cried the more and the water darkened, for Gibson had been gardening that morning, and, as Bolt all too eagerly observed, scored few marks for hygiene.

Josiah’s tears and Bolt’s smugness made Gibson anxious. He fumbled with the bottle, unable to remove the teat with one hand; he lost the measuring spoon which came with the formula and took the one in the sugar bowl, and despite boiling the kettle he used cold water from the tap. He tried walking up and down the kitchen, baby in one hand, bottle in the other, but Bolt was forever getting in his way, and he was saying, ‘No, Gibson, no, this isn’t good enough, haven’t you been told that you have to use previously boiled water? And you can’t give babies cold milk!’

Gibson looked at him furiously and took off with Josiah and bottle into the sitting-room. Bolt followed, and sat himself down in the first armchair he saw. Yes, Bolt prided himself on being able to feel at home in any of his client’s houses, however inhospitable they might be. It was Gibson’s armchair. Had he not already been both red and speechless before such an act of encroachment, Gibson would have most certainly become so, but his repertory was limited, and he sat on the sofa as stiff as a soldier, wrapped his son in a blanket and tried to persuade him to suck at some cold milk.

‘Nice pad you’ve got here,’ said Bolt, surveying the pictures of country mice which came with the house. ‘Very nice.’

And then, after a pause, he went on, ‘I want us to be friends, you know. I want us to get along. Trust. That’s what it’s called, trust. Too little of it about nowadays. It’s like we’ve all of us got to learn about it all over again. A small word, a big idea. Trust.’

Gibson ignored him, grateful to his son for sipping at the cold milk.

‘Doesn’t Eve breastfeed, then?’

Gibson closed his eyes and shook his head.

Bolt took this as progress.

‘I don’t know whether you could tell me where Eve is? Has she gone shopping?’

Gibson shrugged his shoulders.

‘Has she been long?’

No reply.

‘Does she often go away like this?’

Gibson seemed distressed. Bolt felt momentarily guilty that this eking out of the truth should be so painful for him; whom Eve was with, he had no doubt; he was just curious to know whether Fothering had made another visit down to Cambridge to see Eve or whether Eve had gone up to Hull.

Gibson would have felt more comfortable had a boil been growing on his neck. His body began to tremble (as Bolt dutifully observed) and he swept up his baby and took him straight out of that room and back into the garden. Bolt heard the kitchen door slam. He thought to himself, ‘Poor man! But I won’t follow him. He needs to be alone. I’ll wait a while till he calms down. I’m in no hurry.’

Bolt sat back in the armchair and waited. An hour went by: an hour, Bolt observed, when in most ordinary families an evening meal might be served, when the curtains were closed and the TV switched on. The noise of any approaching car made him jump. Eve
would probably be coming home at any moment. What sort of a mother could leave her two-week old baby in the care of a father as inadequate as Gibson? He hadn’t noticed any food in the kitchen, he hadn’t even been offered a cup of tea. The sides of the leatherette armchair were beginning to stick to his arms, and he got up to walk around the room. Instinctively he ran his finger along the top of the pictures on the walls to look for dust, and found it. His practised eye then sought out the skirting boards: was it possible they hadn’t even been wiped down once in the four months of their tenancy? He sighed magnanimously. What else could he expect? Eve wasn’t exactly the type to take her domestic responsibilities seriously. And as for poor old Gibson, he certainly wasn’t going to lay the blame at that old codger’s door. Anyone could see he was doing his best.

How long would he wait? As long as it took, he decided. He’d take the Wednesday morning off in lieu: that would solve the problem of when to take his car in for a service. What if Eve didn’t turn up? Then he’d finally have his heart-to-heart with Gibson: he’d crack, and a good thing, too. Finally, Gibson would confide in him, and he was sure to tell a rum tale.

Suddenly he heard a car drawing up outside the house. Bolt thought quickly: Eve didn’t have a car, yet this sound of a car door slamming had been the very one he had been waiting for. He stood up and waited near the curtain, smiling to himself. Patience rewarded. He glimpsed Fothering’s anxious face, his slump over the steering wheel; he smiled again, maliciously. He hid, waiting for the couple to enter. The doorbell rang. Gibson didn’t answer it. The doorbell rang again. Why didn’t they go round the back, if Eve had forgotten her key? He watched while Fothering made his way back to the car. Then Bolt stopped guessing and ran out of the house to stop him driving away.

‘Dr Fothering, wait!’ he cried.

Fothering got out of his car immediately, instinctively adjusting
his tie when he saw who it was. ‘What are you doing here? What’s going on? Is the baby all right?’

‘The baby’s fine,’ said Bolt. ‘He’s in the garden with Gibson. Come in. Take a look for yourself.’

‘Where’s Eve?’

‘No-one seems to know.’ Bolt raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you heard from her?’

‘Not a word. No-one’s been answering the telephone. The health visitor…’

‘Yes, I know. She’s disappeared. It seems I’m here for much the same reason. Come in.’

Bolt took Fothering back into the sitting-room, and offered him the sofa.

‘Don’t you think I ought to make myself known to Gibson?’ he asked nervously as he sat down.

‘I don’t think he’d appreciate that,’ said Bolt. ‘I’ve been watching him from the toilet. He’s taken the baby into the greenhouse with him.’

‘But he’s looking after the baby?’

‘After a fashion.’

‘Where does Gibson say Eve is?’

‘He won’t tell me. But I think he will,’ said Bolt mysteriously. ‘He’s not exactly the chatty type, is he?’

‘Gibson is Gibson. He’s a good man, and Eve knows that.’
Fothering
began biting his nails.

‘And the baby’s not dead yet!’ Bolt laughed.