Two Loves (19 page)

‘I told her I'd be here for the rest of the day.'

‘I'll call in again when I can … Where's his bottle?'

‘Over there in the sterilising solution.'

That seemed to have been the right answer.

‘Do you think she'll manage to look after him properly in this house?'

‘I don't know,' Rosamund said, her voice trembling a little.

Her hesitancy seemed to resolve the health visitor's doubts. ‘I think she will,' she said. ‘She's quite mature for sixteen, and if you can look in to keep an eye on her from time to time it'll be a great help.'

‘What about her mother? She told me her mother visits her and buys things for the baby.'

‘Oh yes, her mother's a very nice person. I've known her mother for years – Iris. Only of course she's an alcoholic and she's got little ones of her own. But oh yes, Marie will shape up, I'm sure. She and her mother, they do their best, fair play.'

Rosamund felt a rush of love for a woman able to be so tolerant and calm when she herself felt so intolerant and angry.

*   *   *

Daniel returned at four, going straight to lie on his bed and turning his face to the wall.

‘Don't you dare go to sleep,' Rosamund told him in a quiet but rather brutal voice. ‘Marie still hasn't come back and you've got to look after Theodore while I go out to buy him some clothes and nappies and some more milk powder.'

Daniel struggled to sit up. ‘Fair enough,' he said. ‘I'll give him another feed when he wakes up, shall I?'

‘That's up to you. He's not my responsibility.'

‘How long will you be?'

‘I don't know.'

*   *   *

She'd only gone as far as the front door when Marie arrived back. ‘I'm sorry I was a long time,' she said, giving her a radiant smile. ‘But you see, I knew Theodore would be fine with you.'

It was as much as Rosamund could do not to shake her.

*   *   *

‘You can't fucking take this, can you?' Daniel said when she got back with the shopping. ‘You were exactly the same in college. Too fucking middle-class. Too good for me. Too good for everyone. Too good for everyday life. For God's sake, just go, will you, and leave me alone.'

‘I'm not too good for everyday life. This isn't everyday life, this is squalor. I want to help you, but you won't help yourself.'

‘What the hell do you think I'm doing? I'm bloody well going through hell trying to help myself. And you can't even bear to stay the night here.'

‘You've never asked me to stay the night here. Marie seemed to be with you last night.'

‘She's lonely too, you know. She's only a kid and she's on her own. You don't know anything about life, do you? Real life? Being frightened and hungry? Being desperately cold with nothing to put in the meter? Being hungry with absolutely no money to buy food?'

‘I've never known that sort of hardship, no. But I've often been very lonely and unhappy. Money doesn't shield you from those things. I know about those things. And they're bad enough.'

‘I don't even know what you're doing here.'

‘Don't you?' Rosamund felt her blood rising. ‘Well, I'll tell you. I was in love with you, deeply in love with you, when I was nineteen, and I've never really been in love with anyone else. Pathetic, isn't it? I got pregnant by accident and married someone old enough to be my father and I've been on my own for almost ten years, with just about enough money to live on. I paint because I feel the need to do something, but as you may remember, I'm not all that good. Whereas you were bloody brilliant and you've thrown it all away and you'll probably never paint again because you feel you're living real life in this place.'

‘I'm in this bloody place because I can't afford anything else. Why don't you bloody listen?' Daniel threw himself down on his bed. ‘Why don't you go?' he asked in a different voice.

Rosamund's voice changed too. ‘Do you want me to?' she asked quietly.

‘No.' He held out his arms for her and they lay down together without further words. Then he undressed her and she undressed him and they kissed each other, very tenderly at first and then more and more passionately, their hands hot on each other's bodies. Until Daniel finally broke away from her and cried. And she comforted him and told him there was plenty of time, plenty of time, my love, my darling, and held him until he went to sleep. She sat in his room all night, dozing in short snatches and watching his restless sleep. When he woke, he was again fretful and in pain, seeming to have forgotten their brief truce.

*   *   *

The following evening, feeling a desperate need for a bath and a bed, Rosamund returned to Ingrid's flat, and before settling to sleep phoned her mother for news of Joss.

‘I'm so glad you rang, dear. I was at the schoolhouse this morning looking for socks, the phone rang and of course I answered it thinking it might be Brian, but it was Mrs Gilchrist, dear, who seemed in a fine old temper.'

‘Don't worry, Mum. She's probably annoyed that I haven't written to reply to some demands she was making. I'll give her a ring tomorrow. It's too late now, she'll probably be in bed.'

Rosamund felt too benighted by real problems to be much concerned with Molly's petty grievances.

‘But when I explained that I was your mother, dear, she told me to tell you that she could do you a great deal of harm, and would, if you didn't agree to suppress the poems. I think that's what she said.'

‘Good heavens, the woman's mad. You see, Mum, she got her solicitor to get in touch with Erica Underhill to warn her off publication. But she had no right to do it because the copyright of the poems are mine. And I want the book to go ahead because I want a share of the money.'

‘Of course you do, dear. I'm sure you're completely in the right. But what about this harm she can do you? That's what I'm worried about.'

‘She can't do me any harm, Mum. Don't give it another thought. Perhaps she intended to leave Joss something in her will, but I hardly think so. How is he?'

‘He's fine, dear. Brian and I had to take him to see Jim after school this afternoon. Jim. The new baby, dear. Yes, he's home now. I don't think Granny could cope with him, but at least she's paying for a trained Norland nanny to look after him for a twelvemonth. Yes. But not at all the sort of person you'd think of as a Norland nanny – you know, brogues and tweeds and so on. No, in fact the sort of person you'd think of as Swedish au pair. Or even Swedish tart. She was in the briefest of brief bikinis when we arrived and Jim was completely naked, lying on a rug and completely naked.'

‘And how was Thomas?'

‘Oh, Thomas was fully clothed, dear, and very kindly made us a cup of tea.'

*   *   *

That night Rosamund dreamed that Marie had abandoned her baby and that Jo, the health visitor, had agreed to let her have him. She'd had to smuggle him away in a taxi before any one else – Marie's mother? Edmund? – had arrived to claim him, and in the taxi she realised that she hadn't stopped to feed him; he seemed to be shrinking even as she nursed him and fixing his large sad eyes on her as though accusing her of neglect. She'd beaten on the glass separating her from the driver, but he'd taken no notice, though she was sure he could hear her. And where was he hurrying off with them? To her horror she realised that she'd given him no address. And, oh God, he seemed to be driving her onto the Shuttle. And all the time, she was beating on the glass and crying and hugging the little baby to her breast to try to keep him warm, to keep him alive.

She woke sweating and weak with relief to discover that she was safely in bed and not guilty of kidnap or neglect. She put the light on and kept it on for several minutes, looking about her at Ingrid's pretty bedroom and longing to be at home with Joss. She corrected herself. ‘With Joss and Daniel, I mean,' she said.

Chapter Seventeen

‘Can't I come with you?' Marie asked, when Rosamund told her she intended visiting a friend that afternoon while Daniel was at his counselling session. ‘I don't like being here by myself.'

‘Don't you know the people downstairs?'

‘Yes, but I don't like them. They don't talk to me.'

Rosamund had only come across one other tenant, the large, frowning man who'd let her in the previous day, though she'd several times been to the communal kitchen on the ground floor. ‘How many people are there in the house?' she asked.

‘I don't know. Quite a lot. Edmund and Daniel had these two rooms first of all and me and my friend, Kim, had the room downstairs with the doors to the garden.' Marie's voice hardened. ‘Only Kim left when I moved in with Edmund.'

‘And don't you see her now?'

Rosamund had a long wait before Marie answered. ‘She came back Christmas-time, but she wasn't well. Daniel got the ambulance. Daniel went up the road and phoned for the ambulance.'

Rosamund was aware from Marie's reluctance to continue that things had gone badly, very badly. All the same she couldn't resist another question. ‘And what happened to her?'

‘Oh, she died,' Marie said in a shockingly bright voice. ‘Silly cow. All her own fault. On heroin and only fifteen with all her life in front of her.'

‘Is that what people said?'

‘Yes.'

‘Most people are ignorant and stupid,' Rosamund said. ‘But I bet Jo didn't say that.'

‘Jo? Jo Watson? How do you know Jo?'

‘She came here to see Theodore when I was looking after him. I thought she seemed a good sort. She seemed to like you a lot. You and your mum.'

Marie's face relaxed. ‘Yes. Jo was brought up in care herself, so she understood about Kim.'

‘Kim was brought up in a Home?'

‘Only she ran away at fourteen.'

‘Didn't she have a mother?'

‘Don't know. Didn't ever ask her. Didn't think it was my business to ask her.'

‘You're quite right. And I won't ask you anything else.'

‘I don't mind. I don't mind talking about Kim because she was my friend, my best friend.'

‘Tell me a bit more about her then.'

‘Not much to tell. She had curly brown hair and it gave her a lot of grief because she thought it made her look like a kid and she wanted long straight hair. She had a brilliant laugh. She even laughed that night she came back here. When I told her I was up the creek.'

‘Don't cry. I didn't mean to upset you.'

‘It's OK. I don't mind talking to you. You seem like a lady at first, but deep down you're not.'

‘And deep down you seem the sort of person who could be a sort of person like Jo.'

‘Don't be daft.'

‘Tomorrow afternoon we'll go up West and go shopping in Oxford Street.'

‘With what?'

‘I've still got a bit of money left. But I've got to go on my own this afternoon. It's to do with my work.'

‘You said you was going to see a friend.'

‘A very old lady. And to do with my work.'

Marie sat for a while looking at Theodore who was sleeping sweetly in his drawer under a Mickey Mouse blanket. ‘What I really want is a buggy, a second-hand buggy. I've put a pound fifty down on it. Out of that fiver you gave me for the launderette.'

‘How much is it?'

‘A lot.'

‘How much?'

‘Twenty-five quid.' She looked up at Rosamund. ‘But it's in good nick. I tested the brakes and that. And it folds up ever so easy. I could take it on buses, go to see my mum, go anywhere.'

‘We'll go and see it tomorrow. You stay in today, then you'll be here when Daniel comes back. He likes to see Theodore.'

‘He likes to see me as well.'

*   *   *

Erica seemed more frail than Rosamund had remembered, but was in high spirits – due, she said, to the excellent weather. She was dressed in a pale grey silk dress, a white chiffon scarf round her neck. Rosamund felt an awed admiration for her; she was old with wrinkles, loose skin, hooded eyes, but her expression had remained young and eager and this was what you noticed.

Rosamund apologised for postponing the arrangements made for her visit to Gloucestershire, but Erica assured her that she was happy to think of it as a future treat. ‘I like to anticipate,' she said, ‘don't you? Don't you think that looking forward to something is often the best part? When Anthony used to telephone in the morning to say he'd be coming round that evening, I'd spend a lovely day waiting for him. Whatever work I was doing, my mind was attuned to his arrival. Even preparing a meal for him was full of a quite extreme pleasure. I often think of those days, that joy.

‘And you see,' she continued, when they were seated at the window of the elegant dark red sitting room, ‘writing one's autobiography is a very pleasant occupation because one is made to think of the past instead of the future.'

‘You've started on it?'

‘Not the actual writing, no, but I've been busy thinking back and making notes. Of course at my age one's always thinking of the past, but now it's in a structured way, so that one feels more like a writer, even an historian, and less like a maudlin old woman.'

Rosamund started to tell her that she was at the moment unable to undertake the actual writing, but found that Dora had already explained the position to her.

‘My dear, I quite understand. If this young man is important to you, he must come first. I know young women these days like to feel that they owe as much loyalty to other women as to the men in their lives, but that's quite alien to my way of thinking. I would always put a man first and I would always expect my girlfriends – not that I had many girlfriends – to do the same. Don't you agree with me?'