Little Bits of Baby (11 page)

‘Robin!' she sang.

‘Hello, you,' he said. He stood there while she hurled herself at him. He was all in black, including fairly tight black jeans. Her hugging hands stroked his back and she found one falling briefly to his bum. He didn't feel like a monk. ‘I came by to see where you lived,' he said. ‘I saw you come home but thought I should give you time to unwind.'

‘Thanks. You look wonderful.'

‘Thanks.'

He said nothing of her appearance so she took his hand and led him into the sitting-room. There were still high wooden shutters in here, which they kept closed during the week as a security precaution. The shaded room was beautifully cool. Candida uncovered and opened the windows. Robin sat in an armchair in the dark. When she turned, he was smiling again.

‘Why are you smiling?' she asked.

‘Am I?'

‘You know you are. What's so funny?' He laughed then smiled some more. ‘What?' she asked, laughing too, but infuriated. He stopped smiling and reached in the pocket of his polo shirt.

‘I've brought a present.'

‘Oh, Robin!' she gushed, trying to see what he was holding.

‘It's not for you, it's for my god-daughter.'

‘Oh, how sweet. We were so glad when your Ma said you'd said yes.'

‘Where on earth did you find that name?'

‘What? Perdita Margaux Browne? Don't you like it?'

He laughed again. To himself. She reached up to tighten the cloth around her hair with a little tug.

‘I brought her this,' he said, holding out a clenched fist. ‘Hold out your hand.'

She smiled and did as he told her, shutting her eyes. Something hard and cold fell into them with a dry rattling. She opened her eyes. It was a tiny red coral necklace with a gold clasp shaped like a heart. She pressed the catch and laughed to see that the heart released another, thinner heart from its grip.

‘That is what you give little girls, isn't it?' he asked. ‘Coral to cut their teeth on?'

‘Oh yes,' she said. ‘Early days for teeth yet, I hope, but she'll look enchanting it in. She's getting the full works – godparents clutching candles to light her way and renouncing “the Devil and all his work”.'

‘And “all carnal desires of the flesh”.'

‘Yes. I'd forgotten that bit.' That strangely irritated her. Damn him. She laughed and went on, ‘And we've got her great-great-grandmother's christening gown out of mothballs. It's about six feet long.'

She ran dry and he offered nothing. They sat in silence for a moment, staring with sudden candour into one another's sun-pinked face then he said,

‘Aren't you going to welcome me back, then?'

and she said,

‘Don't be silly. There's no need.'

He looked around the room, and stroked the underside of his beard; a mannerism developed behind her back.

‘Nice house,' he said. ‘Just what you always planned to end up in. Are you both fabulously rich now?'

‘Fairly,' she dryly admitted, then stood and passed him back the necklace. ‘Come and give Perdita her present.'

As they climbed the stairs, Robin pausing to appraise the passing pictures and photographs, with his increasingly maddening smile. She heard Jasper shouting at Samantha in the garden. She glanced at her watch and guessed that he was refusing to come inside to eat his supper. She would have to get rid of Robin, soon. She had a dinner party to organise. The Director General and his depressingly well-read male consort were coming, as were a well-known, impossibly glamorous acting couple Jake was wooing towards a five-year instant coffee contract. The flowers were probably beginning to droop in the sink, she had her infallible spinach soufflés to begin and she had forgotten to tell Samantha to polish the silver. They would have to make do with a quick dust. Robin would have to go very soon.

He had stopped and was staring at the large portrait of her and baby Jasper that dominated the main landing. Jake had wanted it in the sitting-room but she had protested because it was rather too true to life and showed her all loose and puffy.

‘Is that your other?' he asked.

‘Yes. Jasper. He's out in the garden.'

‘Mmm. We've already met.'

‘Really? He never said.'

‘Sons don't tell you everything.' Again that smile. ‘Yes, he came out to the pavement and we had a little chat about what monks do. He told me how to make pasta pictures.'

‘Sweet,' she said, distracted. He looked back at the painting.

‘It's very good,' he said. ‘Who did it?'

‘It's a Faber Washington,' she told him, leading the way on to their bedroom. ‘He's a friend of Jake's sister, Tessa. We snapped him up when he was just leaving the Slade. Of course, he's becoming terribly well-known now. I doubt we could afford another.'

‘Of course you could,' he snorted. ‘You're rich as Croesus. Now. Where's this baby?' He swung the necklace from a fore finger. She had forgotten the extraordinary length of his hands. They had once come near to blows when he beat her in a late-night Botticelli Hands Contest.

‘In here,' she whispered, then carried on in her full voice. ‘Don't know why I'm whispering because it's time she woke for a feed.' Actually she had no idea when Perdita should have her next feed, and was not altogether certain of the wisdom of waking her up, but she had felt a sudden urge to impress on him the authenticity of her motherhood.

He followed her into the nursery, having first darted in for a brazen peek at the room she shared with Jake and emerged with the inevitable smile. At what? The size of their bed? The fact that they each had a clock-radio? Her multi-gym? Did she care? Yes, oh dear, yes. Cooing without too much affectation – Perdita was a fairly pretty baby – she leaned into the antique Swedish cot and lifted out her sleep-heavy daughter.

‘Hello, darling! Mmm? Yes! Ready for your tea are you?'

They rubbed noses and she kissed the swirling crown of Perdita's sweaty hair. ‘Look. It's your Godfather Robin,' she went on, pointing the baby to face the visitor. ‘He's brought you a present.'

‘Here,' Robin whispered, holding out the necklace, still on a long forefinger. Perdita blew a bubble, and her head wobbled. Robin smiled a quite different smile – the one Candida remembered – and laid the string of coral on a table.

‘I'm afraid she's still a bit little to focus,' Candida told him. ‘Want to hold her?'

He said nothing, but nodded and held out his arms. She passed the baby over and saw at once that he knew exactly how to hold one. Wondering where he had learnt and crossly waiting for her daughter to save the day by bawling herself puce, she stood back. Perdita lay quite still, bubbling slightly and turning her face in search of an absent bosom. Her heavy breathing seemed almost loud in the silent room. A police siren wailed by in the distance. Jasper yelled,

‘No! I
hate
you!'

Smiling at this loyalty in her son, Candida turned her head for a brief check in the mirror. There she saw her childhood friend cradling her new baby, framed and distanced in reflection. All at once she sensed that the Dob of her childhood and youth had evaporated and with him her old comradely feelings towards him. This bearded stranger, who laughed at her, failed to be impressed and held her child so expertly, aroused quite another, less coherent emotion.

‘Robin, I hate to sound rude, but I've an awful lot on my plate this evening. We've got people coming round and I haven't cooked a thing and I'm not even properly dressed.'

‘That's all right,' he said. ‘I was going anyway.'

‘You must come back, though. We've so much to catch up on. Where are you staying?'

‘Home.'

‘Lovely. Can I say. I'll ring you?'

‘Say what you will,' he said and gave her the other smile – the new, uncomforting one.

She took back Perdita, whom he had lulled into a state of blissful trance, then saw him quickly to the door. With him safely on the pavement she went directly to the sitting-room where she sat, eased her dress off her shoulders and offered her daughter a nipple.

While Perdita sucked and slopped, Candida tried, as she always did when breastfeeding, to relax and think of cool white spaces. She succeeded for a few minutes but then Perdita stopped to draw breath. Candida looked down at her and felt herself blush hotly to the roots of her hair. The softly panting daughter's stare was condemning an idea that had barely formed in the mother's mind.

Twelve

A week later Jake was walking the few hundred yards to their local church to greet the first arrivals. Candida was having problems fitting Perdita into the ancestral christening gown. Thrilled at the sudden revival in their children's respect for faith and tradition, and at the prospect of a party, both sets of in-laws had descended. All four grandparents had arrived early and had come to the house instead of waiting at the church, as directed. The grandmothers were cooing and meddling around the furious candidate for baptism. Their husbands, each a dangerous shade of red, took turns at pushing Jasper on his swing. Jake was meant to have brought these three with him but had slipped out of the kitchen door without a gardenwards glance.

The building was a Georgian one. At least, its shell was Georgian; the original insides had been burned down long ago by a discarded German bomb and replaced, with little eye for architectural sympathy, by a consortium of counsellors in the 1960s. Unversed, Candida and Jake had blithely assumed that any church would be free for a quick weekend baptism, and had set their hearts on somewhere rather finer than the St Thomas Community Centre, only to be made the ignominious offer, kindly meant, of a service shared with three other babies. The religious functions of Saint Thomas's were now contained in a small, glass-walled box draped with orange hessian curtains and furnished with matching plastic chairs. The rest of the building housed a community hall and the local Citizens' Advice Bureau. A large noticeboard in the portico where Jake stood to wait flapped with details of weekly events held there: Gay Self-Defence (Women Tuesdays, Men Wednesdays); something called Aerobicise; bicycle maintenance classes; sitar appreciation classes; eurhythmics (introductory Thursdays, intermediary Friday) and Meditation Made Easy. The Woodcutter Folk (which Jasper wanted to join, apparently) took the place over on Saturday mornings. Across a poster for a concert by the Stockwell Glee Club someone had printed with a large rubber stamp in lurid green ink,

Make the Switch!

Drop the Bitch!

Eat the Rich!

Jake tucked this out of sight behind an immensely comfortable Indian's invitation to join the way of truth.

The Maitlands were the first friends to arrive. He heard the full-chested banging of an old Volkswagen engine, looked up and saw their much-patched, first-generation dormobile rolling to a halt beneath the dusty lime trees. He had not laid eyes on Andrea since Robin's twenty-first birthday dinner, when she had tried to place him between two godparents and Robin had made a fuss and insisted he sit beside him. She had aged since then. She had let her hair begin to grey and had lost her firmness of outline, but she had still the kind of vigorous buoyancy that won children's trust and made the more youthful of her contemporaries seem faintly overdone. Peter looked hot in his suit beside her. Robin was not with them. Jake thought of their secret squash games.

The roles have reversed, he thought. Now I'm
his
bit on the side and this is his innocent wife.

‘Hello, Jake,' said Andrea, taking his hand and drawing him closer. ‘How lovely.' She kissed his cheek.

‘Mrs Maitland. Mr Maitland,' said Jake. ‘It's been so long.'

‘Peter and Andrea, now, I think,' said Peter and winked.

‘I see you've still got the old dormobile.'

‘“Devon Caravette”, please!' laughed Andrea. ‘Yes. It's a collector's item, now. Some total strangers asked to buy it the other day. I was in a car park somewhere. They said they were surfers. They were very brown, so I suppose they might have been. Too funny really.'

‘Is Robin not with you?' Jake asked them.

‘Oh, of course. You poor thing. He's the reason we're here. You must be so worried,' she said. ‘But don't be. He's only disappeared for a bit.'

‘Disappeared?'

‘Well,' Peter went on, ‘not disappeared exactly. Just gone out. He's been doing this all week. We wake up and he's not there. Then he turns up halfway through the afternoon with a little bag from some museum or a bunch of flowers for Andrea and says he's been for a walk. Not to worry. He'll be here in time.'

‘I made sure he had the address,' added Andrea. ‘And he's bought himself one of those watches you don't have to wind.'

‘Oh.'

‘From a man with a suitcaseful in Leicester Square.'

‘Ah.'

‘Don't worry.'

‘I won't, then.'

They stood between two pillars and stared briefly at the road.

‘Lovely looking church,' said Andrea. ‘I've passed it so many times and I've never thought to get out and look inside.'

‘It's a bit of a disappointment, I'm afraid,' Jake told her. ‘I think it was gutted by fire in the Blitz, or something.'

‘Oh dear.' She brushed a hair from Peter's shoulder. ‘Is Candida inside?'

‘Actually, no. She was having a bit of trouble with Perdita's dress – one of those long, ancestral things – so she asked me to come on and usher you all in. In point of fact I haven't even seen the priest yet.'

‘Nice and relaxed,' said Peter. ‘That's the spirit.'

They stood a little longer, then Andrea said,

‘Well, we'll go on in and have an exploring session.'

‘OK,' said Jake. ‘Our part is just inside on your left. You can't miss it. It's the bit with all the orange curtains and the concrete font.'