Behind the Scenes at the Museum (4 page)

Alice knows a threat when she sees one. She can feel herself being pulled back, and tries to resist, screwing up her eyes and concentrating on returning to the silence when – the child under the kitchen table (whom we’d forgotten about) chooses this moment to hit his finger with the wooden hammer (yes, it is indeed a boy) and lets out a bloodcurdling yell that would bring the dead inquisitively out of their graves let alone a mother back from an out-of-body experience.

His brothers rush whooping into the house to see if there is any blood, the dog in the yard wakes up and starts barking in a demented way and the child in a cradle in the corner of the kitchen that we hadn’t even noticed, wakes up with a start and adds its screams to the chaos.

Poor, hypomanic Alice finds herself being sucked back into her life, through the bluebird-blue sky and the molten-gold marigolds, until she’s thrown back against the kitchen doorpost. Slam! The invisible baby Nell kicks in sympathy with the howling child under the table who, when Alice picks him up to try and comfort him, tangles his fingers in her hair and pulls three pink glass buttons from her blouse.

Finally, as the culmination of this cacophony, the horse and cart arrive in the yard of the cottage rendering the dog hysterical. A lanky, foreign-looking man with a hooked nose and a whiff of Edgar Allan Poe about him – the old-fashioned frock-coat, the melancholy hands – dismounts and approaches the open door. With a theatrical sweep he removes his hat and makes a low bow. ‘Madame,’ he announces, straightening himself, ‘Jean-Paul Armand at your service.’

He was a magician, of course, the mysterious shapes in his cart were his strange props – the collapsible Mediterranean back-cloth, the ornate brass plant-pot holding a palm with stiffened-cotton leaves, the velvet drapes, the extraordinary camera – only the
chaise-longue
wasn’t provided by him, but was dragged by Ada and Lawrence out into the back yard. ‘The light’s better there,’ he explained.

‘Nothing to pay until I return with the photographs’ was how he ensnared Alice who, in an uncharacteristic burst of optimism, believed she would indeed somehow acquire the money in the intervening period. So the children were scrubbed and brushed and generally transformed. Albert’s tears (the child under the table) were assuaged by a barley-sugar twist from Mr Armand – he always had a pocketful with him to persuade his small, recalcitrant sitters. He took photographs of Alice’s children in different permutations – Ada with Albert on her knee; Albert, Tom, and Lawrence together; Ada holding the real baby Lillian (the neglected child in the crib) instead of her doll, and so on. Lillian hasn’t celebrated her first birthday yet and just succeeds in slipping it in before her mother disappears from her life for ever.

The second button was found by Tom who carried it around in his pocket for a week along with a conker and a marble, intending to return it to his mother, but before he could he lost it somewhere and then forgot all about it.

The third was found by Rachel, during a vigorous cleaning session not long after she moved into the cottage. She prised it out from between the two flagstones where it had lodged and placed it in her button box, from where, many years later, it was transferred to my grandmother’s button box, a presentation tin of Rowntree’s chocolates – and from there to Gillian’s stomach of course, and from there – who knows? As to the fate of the children – Lawrence left home at fourteen and nobody ever saw him again. Tom married a girl called Mabel and became a solicitor’s clerk and Albert died in the First World War. Poor Ada died when she was twelve after a bout of diphtheria. Lillian led a long, rather strange, life and Nell – who on this hot day is unborn and has all her life ahead of her – will one day be my grandmother and have all her life behind her without ever knowing how that happened (another woman lost in time).

Bunty’s reply is inarticulate and indistinct but I think the general gist of it is that she’s just as anxious to get the whole thing over with as our friendly gynaecologist. Dr Torquemada, I presume? The midwife angel sent to preside at my birth creaks with starch. She raps out her orders – ‘PUSH! PUSH NOW!’

‘I am bloody pushing!’ Bunty yells back. She sweats and grunts, all the while clutching onto something that looks like a small shrunken bit of mammal, a furry locket round her neck (see
Footnote (
ii
)
). It’s a lucky rabbit’s foot. Not very lucky for the rabbit, of course, but a talismanic charm of some potency for my mother. I’ve gone off her actually. Bunty that is, not the rabbit. Nine months of being imprisoned inside her hasn’t been the most delightful of experiences. And recently there’s been no room at all. I don’t care what’s out there, it has to be better than this.

‘PUSH, WOMAN! PUSH NOW!’

Bunty screams convincingly and then all of a sudden it’s over with and I slip out as quietly as a fish down a stream. Even Dr Torquemada is surprised, ‘Hello, what have we here?’ he says as if he wasn’t expecting me at all. The midwife laughs and says, ‘Snap!’

I’m about to be shipped off to the nursery when someone suggests that Bunty might like to have a look at me. She takes a quick glance and pronounces her judgement. ‘Looks like a piece of meat. Take it away,’ she adds, waving her hand dismissively. I suppose she’s tired and emotional. She didn’t specify what kind of meat. Rolled brisket? Spring lamb? Hand of pork perhaps or something unnamed, raw and bloody. Well, there you go – nothing surprises me any more. After all, I’m surely not a novelty – she’s already produced pale Patricia and cross-patch Gillian from her loins, and I’m so well behaved in comparison with the latter. Gillian was born angry, bustling out of the womb, little arms and legs angling furiously while she screamed her head off, just in case nobody had noticed her. Fat chance.

My absent father, in case you’re wondering, is in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster where he’s just had a very satisfactory day at the races. He has a pint of bitter in front of him and is just telling a woman in an emerald green dress and a ‘D’ cup, that he’s not married. He has no idea that I’ve arrived or he would be here. Wouldn’t he? In fact, my gestation has neatly spanned the old and the new, for I’ve arrived just after the King’s death, making me one of the first babies born into the new Queen’s reign. A new Elizabethan! I’m surprised they haven’t called me Elizabeth. They’ve called me nothing. I’m ‘Baby Lennox’, that’s what it says on my label anyway. The midwife, who has red hair and is very tired, carries me through to the night nursery and deposits me in a cot.

It’s very dark in the night nursery. Very dark and very quiet. A dim blue light shines in one corner, but most of the cots are just black coffin-like shapes. The darkness stretches out to infinity. Space winds whip through the icy interstellar spaces. If I reached out my tiny, wrinkled fingers that look like boiled shrimp, I would touch – nothing. And then more nothing. And after that? Nothing. I didn’t think it would be like this. It’s not that I expected a street party or anything – streamers, balloons, banners of welcome unfurling – a smile would have done.

The midwife goes away, the neat tip-tapping of her black lace-up shoes on the linoleum of the corridor gradually fades and we are left alone. We lie in our cots, wrapped tightly in white-cotton cellular blankets, like promises, like cocoons, waiting to hatch into something. Or little baby parcels. What would happen if the little baby parcels lost their labels and got mixed up? Would the mothers recognize their babies if they pulled them out of a baby bran tub?

A rustling of starched wings and the red-haired nurse reappears with another baby parcel and puts it down in the empty cot next to me. She pins a label on its blanket. The new baby sleeps peacefully, its top lip curling with each small inhalation.

There are no more babies this night. The night nursery sails on into the cold winter night freighted with its delicate cargo. A milky vapour hangs over the sleeping babies. Soon when we’re all asleep, the cats will creep in and suck our breath away.

I will disappear in this darkness, I will be extinguished before I’ve even got going. Sleet spatters in gusts onto the cold glass of the nursery window. I’m alone. All alone. I can’t stand this – where’s my mother? WAA! WAA! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! ‘The little bastard’s going to wake them all.’ It’s the red-haired nurse, I think she’s Irish. She’s going to save me, she’s going to take me to my mother. No? No. She takes me to a little side room, behind the sluice. A kind of cupboard, really. I spend my first night on earth in a cupboard.

We’re fed by the clock so that we don’t become spoilt and demanding. The general feeling amongst the mothers is that the babies are in a conspiracy against them (if only we were). We can scream until we’re exhausted, it won’t make any difference to the ceremonial feeding ritual, the time when all the little baby parcels are fed, winded, changed, laid down again and ignored.