The Sugar Mother (26 page)

He knew his last-minute avoidance of the Christmas visit upset Cecilia but, as usual, she talked and laughed herself into an acceptance of what was simply bad luck. She had been ill over Christmas and lost her voice. He noticed the huskiness which still persisted. A dreadful flu, she had said. A lot of it around, he replied, hoping the telephone call would be brief. The worst part was, she said, that the house was all stocked up with food. Mumsie was dreadfully upset about all the food which she could not eat, and Vorwickl was only eating lentils and bran and perhaps a small handful of nuts. He understood the loss of voice following the infection would have been largely due to what he called nerves. Several pages of the notebooks of the internal and the intangible were devoted to manifestations of this sort. In the rather touching husky voice she had asked him to send the
Battersea Polytechnic Cookery Book
; it was the one they had used at school; Daphne would know it, the one with the yellow American cloth covers which stuck to the other recipe books in the cupboard. Vorwickl, she said, had expressed an interest in the idea of an even more sparse diet and the suggestions for meals during the Depression (at the back of the book) might prove to be what she wanted. “Cold Cabinet Pudding.” She had started to laugh and cough. “Take four slices of stale bread, half an apple and four raisins…”

Edwin glanced at the clock. All that burdened him was on the way home. How quick thoughts were and how easily thoughts could be crowded with painful and impossible things. The child in his arms was quieter now but was still crying in what seemed an almost grown-up way, as an older child might cry. He had only heard his angry or hungry baby cry before. It suddenly seemed as if this was the crying of the heart-
broken, as if all the cares of living suddenly were pressing on this tiny skull, as if he knew already that he had come into all the difficult and intolerable things which had to be faced every day. Edwin felt the tears coming into his own eyes when he saw tears on the baby's face.

“I didn't know they cried tears,” Daphne said. Edwin was touched and appalled to see her eyes fill and spill over so that she had to find a tissue.

“Don't, Daph,” he said gently. “It's all right,” he said, “don't cry.”

“I'm sorry, Teddy,” Daphne said. “I'll fetch us some coffee; Fiorella's brewing some.”

As he moved the child from one arm into the other, the soft hair and skin brushed against his cheek, filling him with an incredible tenderness. He moved his lips secretly across the top of the little head, feeling once more the softness of the wispy hair.

Leila and her mother, he reflected, would need the fur coats as soon as they stepped off the plane in London. The money apparently owing on them was considerable. He, to his surprise, found himself wondering whether the coats really were still to be paid for—“paid off,” Leila's mother had said—or whether someone, Mr. Bott or an accomplice, perhaps a respectable buxom thief, had stolen them. Daphne, if he mentioned it to her, would be sure to say that it was more than likely that the extra money he had handed over was not needed as a contribution to the coats at all. It was unpleasant, awful—to use one of Daphne's words—to have thoughts like these. There was nothing he could do about the money except stop his check first thing in the morning. But the thought that Leila might suffer in some way because of this action made even thinking of such an action impossible.

After a short rest the child was crying again. Crying and crying. Edwin, rocking the baby in his arms, began again to pace to and fro. The crying seemed to contain more despair than ever.

He heard, through the crying, the front doorbell. Cecilia. It
could not be Cecilia. She could not possibly have arrived sooner than expected. He heard the bell again. It was probably Buffy and Paulette coming to fill in the hours of waiting. He heard, still through the child's crying, the small commotion in the hall and a moment later Leila came into the room. Leila's mother, carrying the fur coats, followed and Daphne came in last.

Leila, without a word or even a look, dropped her ugly handbag and took the crying child from Edwin. She sat down on the sofa and, unbuttoning her blouse, held the child close, her arms folded round him as if to keep everything and every person away. She bent her head so that her lips rested in the softness of the down-like hair. She was, Edwin could see, completely absorbed in her son, in comforting him and in protecting him and in feeding him. In spite of all the arrangements and all the money he was, without question, her son. She rocked to and fro on the cushions. There was no sound in the room except the little gulping murmurs of swallowing which the child made. Leila, rocking, began to sing, a low crooning song. Edwin, having heard this song before, was very moved. He stood in the middle of the room gazing at Leila and her child.

“She's cried and cried, cried herself silly, cried till she threw up all over the place.” Leila's mother, letting her armful of coats slide to the floor, sank into an armchair. Edwin nodded. It was like the night when he had come straight back from the airport just before Christmas.

“She's cried and cried, cried herself sick,” Leila's mother, meeting him in the hall, had said then. He had dropped his luggage and his coat and gone straight in to Leila and taken her in his arms, feeling the solid shape of the child between them as he held her gently and steadily closer.

Daphne had come in that night, he remembered, not expecting to see him, and was immediately worried about Cecilia, saying, in as soft a voice as she could manage, “Teddy darling! But you will have to let Cecilia know at once; she'll be waiting, expecting…”

“Yes, yes,” he'd said. “Of course, Daph, of course I'll tell Cecilia. I'll cable. I'm not able to get away after all.”

It had been clear that Daphne, not particularly liking Leila or her mother, had visited, as she thought during Edwin's absence, out of kindness. He had realized then how deep was her sense of friendship and affection for him. Leila and her mother were isolated in the life they had with him. Daphne, aware of this isolation, had regarded them as being ordinary, to be visited in an ordinary way. He remembered now how this had touched him at the time, and he had always meant to say some words of thanks but never did.

Daphne did not go away at Christmas though the others often tried to persuade her to go with them to Singapore or Bali. Once they had been to New Zealand. It was not so much that they liked to travel but they enjoyed the idea of traveling. They liked to have traveled. At Christmas Daphne, on Christmas Day, always took Miss Heller to church and then for a little ride in the car and a picnic, which Miss Heller ate greedily in the car, not looking at the sea or the river or the hills. Daphne packed things which Miss Heller could eat with little plastic spoons from neat little plastic containers because that was what Miss Heller liked. Edwin knew all this about Daphne. He knew too that some, perhaps two or three, girls, boarders at St. Monica's, did not go home for holidays and, spending their holiday in school, were offered music and drawing and some watercolor painting. Daphne, for very little extra money, was supposed to go in every day to provide these. She always included in her holiday program an outing either to the museum or, for sketching, to the zoo.

The school Christmas dinner, to which Daphne was invited and at which she was expected to be present, was on Christmas Eve. Miss Hearnsted, carving a chicken, even two sometimes, served rather mean helpings for herself, Daphne and the girls. As the school kitchen and boardinghouse staff, on board wages, had Christmas Day off, the girls made toast and cocoa for themselves in the school sick bay. One year, Daphne told Edwin during one of their walks in the pines, the girls had
telephoned for a taxi to bring a pizza to the front door of the school. They had been obliged to hide it immediately, as Miss Hearnsted, taking a sudden walk, had appeared on the front-door steps (which were absolutely out of bounds for the girls), suggesting that she would play dominoes with them. The pizza, hidden under a nearby bush, was stone cold, of course, when they were able, after twenty-three games, which they lost, to eat it.

Edwin, because he did not know what to do, continued to stand, uncertain and half-smiling, in the middle of the room. Leila's mother leaned back in her chair. “There was nothing I could do,” she said. “She's cried and cried. She would have all of them cabbage leaves off in the toilets at the airport, ripped them off. I kid you not, that girl, Leila, wasn't going anyplace leaving her baby behind. No way!”

“Oh, dear!” Daphne said. Her remark, which was clearly inadequate, was ignored.

“There was nothing anyone could do,” Leila's mother said. She looked exhausted. “There was nothing I could do,” she said.

“No, no, of course not,” Edwin said gently. Daphne, he noticed, was slipping through the door; not slipping exactly, but more as if backing out like a large expensive car with a quiet engine and only just enough space on either side. He watched in amazement as she who was usually so clumsy achieved this. Everything seemed changed. There was the sudden silence, for one thing, broken only by the regular small noises of sucking. This did change everything; even the braid on the cushions where Leila sat seemed bright and fresh in spite of being old and worn as it really was. He was unable to stop looking at Leila and the child. Suddenly he was an outsider, not the child's father at all and not at all sure that Leila's mother was entirely truthful. Leila's supposed “crying and crying” now and at the earlier time when he had come home instead of going to Cecilia for Christmas: was Leila's mother making this up? Leila was certainly composed, very calm now, and that time earlier, when he had folded her in his arms, it
was more his feeling that he remembered. His feeling of joy at returning and not hers at having him return.

Daphne was at the door, edging in sideways, carrying a tray. Edwin, roused from his tender worship, remembered his customary chivalry and took the laden tray, making little noises of thanks and appreciation. Daphne had used the large teapot, the one they never used because it was too big, and the wrong cups.

“I've sent Fiorella home,” she said in a low voice. “I've told her, ‘not a word to a soul,' or else no violin in the orchestra.”

 

“It's a bit like Shakespeare,” Daphne said, taking a large bite of the cake Leila's mother had made and left in a tin “against Dr. Sissilly's homecoming.”

“The ending,” Daphne continued, surveying with approval the place where she had bitten the cake. “Shakespeare,” she said, “has done this, the endings of some of his plays,
Lear
, for example, as well as he can.”

Edwin said yes to Daphne. He was thinking, as he continued to look at Leila, of the Madonna. Dürer, he thought, “Madonna mit dem Kind.” Benvenuto di Giovanni, “Madonna and Child Enthroned Between Two Angels.” Leila sat with her mother on one side of her and Daphne on the other. He remembered the elaborate dressing up of the Christ child and watched Leila as she replaced her baby's little embroidered jacket with a fresh one which had, not a herringbone stitch in gold thread, but tiny blue forget-me-nots all round the neck, the loving work of Leila's mother some weeks earlier. The child, contented now, lay across his mother's lap and it seemed to Edwin that the little fat limbs, dimpled in places, hardly fitted the strangely wise face.

“My son,” Edwin wanted to say, “my dear son.” He felt his eyes fill with tears. The baby's face was like the experienced face of an elderly man.

At Christmas, during that unexpected and intensely happy time together, they had listened to carols and looked at
Edwin's books of paintings and reproductions of illuminated manuscripts. He saw again in Leila, as she sat resting, the Madonna-like quality, the tenderness in the tilt of the head and the possibilities of silence, patience and endurance. The gray-haired Joseph, he recalled, had a wan starved look which he felt he could match immediately with his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Like Joseph, perhaps he was not the father of this child. Perhaps there was, in the theft of the fur coats (if they were in fact stolen), a young, spotty-faced male accomplice who regularly received the letters Leila wrote in her large handwriting on decorated notepaper. Perhaps the thief, if there was one, was not after all a fleshy woman. For an unknown reason, Edwin reflected, the stealing of fur coats should rightfully be the work of females. He supposed they simply put them on and then walked cozily out of the shop. Then, hugged in the warmth, they joined a bus queue or, if feeling it more appropriate, hailed a taxi.

Turning away from doubts about his claim on the child, he tried to think in a more hopeful way. He now understood in these quiet moments how every person is, at some time in his life, the subject of adoration and love and that this, from necessity, gets forgotten. Modeling himself as usual on Cardano, he thought he would turn his meditation upon the blessed Virgin Mary; he tried to think of the exact words for a quotation. These were almost correct. It was the material from which writing could spring. He thought he would write something, a parable. A suburban parable for an entirely new bible. But to make sure that this bible would be purchased and, more important, read, it would have to be written with a strong story line and to a pattern, a formula already familiar, based on real life and contemporary issues, with real characters with whom hoped-for readers could become involved. He remembered reading somewhere that characters in stories and novels must be created from the imagination and not merely remembered as relatives or friends were remembered. Suggestion could come from real people and from real experience but something more should be offered from which the reader
could make his own connections. And, like the Greeks, they should be able to predict the events so that the drama could move from the surface of human life to the depths. To write something he would have to create from the original, and he was aware of the difficulties. He might find such writing impossible. And why, at his age, should he confront something which was so hard to do? And why should he put himself in the way of a possibly spiteful reviewer, someone who might have achieved even less than he had himself. Such a person might exist. It was possible.