Rock a Bye Baby (32 page)

‘Gran? I’m going away with Johnnie. His parents have offered us rooms. They’ve got a big house in London. I’m not saying I won’t come back. I will. Of course I will.’

The look on her grandmother’s face was unexpectedly forthright. ‘I know,’ she said quietly.

‘You do?’

Although she told herself that she shouldn’t be surprised, her grandmother’s calm response took her totally by surprise.

‘I saw it coming,’ said Rosa Brooks.

‘In the tea leaves?’

Rosa patted her chest. ‘In my heart.’

Marcie’s breath caught in her throat. Oh God, she didn’t want to leave. But she must; for the sake of her family, she must.

Her voice trembled when she spoke. ‘Will you say goodbye to everybody for me? Tell Dad I’ll send him the consent forms. Will that be alright? And I’ll write to you, Gran. I promise I’ll write to you.’

Rosa Brooks had a reputation for being curt, even cold. Rarely did she reveal her emotions or wear her heart on her sleeve as some would have it. Tonight her eyes sparkled.

‘Write to me with your new address and I will take care of everything,’ said her grandmother.

The loving smile that crossed her grandmother’s lips was for her and her alone. Things will be fine,
Marcie told herself. You’re doing the right thing and things are
bound
to be fine!

On Friday night she was waiting at the bus stop when Johnnie came by. She was so relieved to see him that she didn’t question why he hadn’t come to see her the previous week. He pulled over and waited for her to get on, then suddenly caught sight of the old suitcase she was carrying.

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve left home. My gran wouldn’t let me stay there once she found out about the baby.’ It was a lie but she didn’t want to mention Alan Taylor and for Johnnie to question whether the baby was his.

‘What about your dad? Will he sign the consent forms?’

‘We’ll write to him from your place. Writing is best when you need someone to think calmly,’ she said, taking leaf out of her grandmother’s book.

She could see the look in his eyes, though his silk scarf still covered half his face and his voice was muffled. He hesitated in answering, eyeing her as though he were thinking things over. Her heart lurched in her chest.

‘I have to warn you. I haven’t told them about the baby. But we’ll be welcome. I’m sure we’ll be welcome.’

She wasn’t sure he sounded very confident. A few
days ago everything had been going to plan. Now everything seemed to be unravelling.

Johnnie drove carefully all the way to London in consideration of Marcie’s condition.

She couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. He’d told her very little about his parents. She felt nervous about meeting them, afraid she wouldn’t meet their standards, and afraid they wouldn’t meet hers.

Johnnie parked the bike in a gravel driveway while Marcie stood with her mouth open looking up at the house he lived in.

‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ he said after he’d taken off his helmet and his white silk scarf. ‘My name’s not Johnnie Hawke. Well, it is Johnnie, but it’s Haskins: John Edward Haskins. I thought Hawke sounded more impressive.’

Marcie nodded mutely. She had a feeling that she was going to find a lot more surprises in Johnnie’s life.

To begin with, she had never suspected that Johnnie’s family were well off and never ever had Johnnie confessed that his father was a vicar! Maurice Haskins’s hair was collar length and coal black. Unlike his son his eyes were dark and he had a large nose. Marcie couldn’t help thinking that he suited the name Hawke more than Haskins.

‘He’s right trendy for a man of the cloth,’ Johnnie told her, looking amused by her surprise. ‘Mum’s OK too.’

‘Call me Jane,’ said Johnnie’s mother. She had a refined but friendly face and pale-blonde hair held
back by a black velvet Alice band. A box-pleated skirt matched a pale-blue twin set. Pearl earrings matched a double string around her neck and she wore sensible shoes. Her smile was quick and ready as though well rehearsed.

‘I’ll get the box room ready for you.’

Marcie thanked her. The feeling that she was imposing on them wouldn’t go away.

‘Up here,’ said Jane Haskins, taking charge of the battered brown case.

Marcie glanced nervously at Johnnie. He’d taken off his leather jacket and boots at the front door. A row of tartan slippers sat on the lower shelf of an old-fashioned hall stand. She’d almost laughed out loud to see him slip his feet into a pair.

The room was up at the top of the house. The vicarage was three storey plus cellars, and was built in a mock-Tudor fashion. To Marcie’s eyes it was the most impressive house she’d ever been in.

‘This is lovely,’ said Marcie once her suitcase was lying on the bed. ‘Dead posh. Poshest house I’ve ever been in. The view’s lovely too.’

It wasn’t exactly true. Dormer windows and tree-lined avenues gave way to red roofs and chimney pots. The air smelled different around here – smutty and dusty – and she found herself missing the smell of the sea.

Jane Haskins spoke first. ‘It’s Johnnie’s I take it.’

Marcie nodded dumbly. Of course it was. Weren’t they going to believe her?

Johnnie’s mother seemed to sense her nervousness. ‘Never mind. We’ll talk about it later.’ She sounded kind, but perhaps showing kindness was just part of the stock in trade of a vicar’s wife. It was almost imperceptible, but Marcie noticed the tightness of Jane Haskins’s smile.

The door closed. The tension and travelling had worn her out so she slumped down on the bed, too tired to even take her coat off.

Her eyes alighted on a small wooden crucifix hanging on the wall above her head, the only adornment in the whole room. She said a little prayer. ‘Please God. Make them like me.’

Her eyes closed and she slept. In her dreams an odd observation came to her: Johnnie looked nothing like either of his parents.

Downstairs a nonchalant Johnnie was placing a record on the radiogram: Duane Eddy singing ‘Come on Everybody’. It was the first record he’d ever bought. He’d told Marcie once that ‘Twist and Shout’ by the Beatles was his favourite. The truth was he couldn’t stand them – their hair, their dress sense or their simple, sentimental songs.

Just as he’d expected, both parents came into the room and turned the atmosphere oppressive. The room
already felt clammy and darkened quickly as the clouds gathered and the rain began to fall.

His mother’s eyes stayed fixed on his face as she lowered herself into a chintz-covered armchair. His father stood unblinking in front of the fireplace as though he were about to impart a sermon.

To some extent that’s exactly what he is going to do, Johnnie thought. I’m the sinner who’s strayed from the path. He stayed in cool dude mode and waited for the storm to break.

‘John, my son, perhaps I was naïve to think that your life would run along tramlines, but I truly think I believed that. I even once entertained the hope that you might follow in my footsteps and enter the Church. However, I did not expect you to bring a young woman here in such an advanced condition.’

‘She’s pregnant,’ snapped Johnnie, eyes lowered, hands shoved in pockets. Why couldn’t his father ever get straight to the point? Why couldn’t he use the right words, or even the less welcome phrases? ‘Or to put it another way, Dad, she’s up the duff or got a bun in the oven, and I did it!’

Johnnie’s smile was purposely disrespectful. His parents had bred that in him, though they wouldn’t see it that way. Wishing to appear modern, they’d chosen to explain things to him rather than use any enforcement whatsoever. Half the time he hadn’t
understood what they were on about. Whatever had made them believe that a nine-year-old could understand the subtleties of an adult relationship?

His father took a deep breath and shot a worried look at his wife. ‘The point is, John, what are you going to do about it?’

Throwing one leg over the chair arm, he slung himself into the chair matching the one his mother was sitting in. ‘Marry her, I suppose.’

Again a look flashed between his parents. He guessed what was coming. Who said charity begins at home?

His father opened the proceedings. ‘And what about your studies? You’ve been working so hard at them these last few weeks. Indeed, you’ve hardly left the house. Do you still wish to attend Oxford?’

Johnnie shrugged. ‘Not now.’

He didn’t confess that he’d been chewing things over for a few weeks, deciding which meant the most to him. He’d decided on Marcie.

‘Where is she from?’ his father pressed.

‘Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey.’

He made a tutting sound. ‘Just as I suspected. The wrong side of the tracks for you, my boy. You cannot possibly contemplate marrying her. Just think of it. All that education wasted and for what? A lapse of judgement on a one-night stand should not stand in the way of a university education.’

Johnnie looked up at him from beneath a thick fall of hair. ‘Marcie was not a one-night stand.’

‘All the same, John—’

What are you saying, Father?’ Johnnie snapped. ‘That she’s working class and we’re not? If you want your parishioners to think you’re modern, Father, then you’re going to have to shelve that attitude. I thought that everybody was supposed to be equal in this day and age. Is that right?’

He saw his father’s jaw clench and knew that not for the first time the urge to lash out at his son’s disrespect had almost overpowered him.

His mother joined the fray. ‘You cannot marry that girl, John!’

Now it was his turn to be firm. He was almost as tall as his father when he got to his feet. He looked straight into his eyes.

‘I’m going to marry Marcie. I WANT to marry Marcie! I’m going to the café. Tell Marcie I’ll be back later.’

He stormed out of the room.

Maurice and Jane Haskins were the epitome of controlled emotions. The Reverend Maurice Edward Haskins remained standing at the mantelpiece, pipe clenched between his teeth, his dark eyes appearing to be staring into infinity. His wife, Jane Alicia Haskins, sat primly in her armchair, knuckles tightly clenched.

‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘That’s all the thanks we get for looking after him all these years.’

‘He’s not a puppy, Jane. We didn’t buy him from a pet shop.’

‘It wasn’t that different. A little gratefulness wouldn’t go amiss.’

Her husband sighed. ‘He doesn’t know he’s adopted, Jane, so why should he be grateful?’

Marcie didn’t hear his bike rumble into life and roar off in the direction of the North Circular. The past few months had drained her. She slept in the best bed she’d slept in for a long time.

It was the sound of the front doorbell that finally awoke her. The glow of sodium streetlights streamed through the window, turning the grey walls yellow.

Her heart raced as she pushed herself up onto her elbows. Surely her father hadn’t found her that quickly?

Dragging herself to the edge of the bed, she sat gripping the dusky pink counterpane. The voices from downstairs were muffled. It couldn’t possibly be her father. He’d be trumpeting by now if he thought he’d found her.

All the same there was something worrying about the tone of the visitors’ voices and that of the vicar and his wife.

Her shoes had come off and it wasn’t easy getting them back on. Her feet were swollen. Barefooted she
went over to the window and looked at her watch. One-thirty. Crikey! Had she been asleep that long?

She looked beyond the laurel hedge to the street and saw a police car. It occurred to her that perhaps her father had enlisted their help in finding her. On the other hand he tended to shy away from the law.

Then another thought hit her, a thought so terrible that she felt her throat closing in and her chest tightening.

Throwing her shoes to the floor, she hurried as best she could along the top landing, down the stairs, along the second landing and the last flight of stairs.

Johnnie’s parents were sitting in the room they’d been in earlier when Johnnie had told them about the baby. They looked ashen and pale and didn’t look up when she entered the room. There were also two policemen, both standing, both looking very serious.

One of the policeman’s eyes flickered over her swollen belly.

A claw of fear tightened around her heart. ‘What’s happened? Where’s Johnnie?’

They didn’t ask her who she was. They just told her that he’d been speeding along the North Circular Road towards the Mile End Café. He’d lost control on a bend.

‘A tanker had spilled oil on the road earlier that day. I’m afraid he skidded into the path of an oncoming bus.’

The funeral was quite an event – Johnnie’s friends heard about it and came along en masse on their motorbikes, their leather jackets shiny black in a downpour of rain.

The Reverend and Mrs Haskins shared a large black umbrella. The service was being conducted by a bishop, a friend of the family.

Mrs Haskins had hardly spoken since the accident and when she did it was in sharp, minimal staccato. Johnnie’s father seemed more self-contained, his expression stoical as though maintaining a front for the benefit of the relatives, even though he was the closest of the relatives.

Marcie found it difficult to understand how self-contained they were. She sensed they were grieving, but hadn’t seen them cry. There was just an anguished look in their eyes, as though they were reliving Johnnie’s life somewhere deep in their minds.

She consoled herself with the fact that they were of a different class and born into a different age than she. They were grieving in their own way, a way she didn’t quite understand.

Alone beneath a black umbrella loaned to her by Johnnie’s parents, Marcie followed the proceedings as if in a dream – this couldn’t really be happening. Whoever heard of a funeral where the graveside was lined with so many young faces mourning the loss of one of their own?

She’d not written to her family, even to tell them what had happened. Somehow putting pen to paper made things more real than they actually were – if she didn’t write the details down, then they might not be true and Johnnie would come swinging through the door, his white silk scarf hiding the lower half of his face.