Little Bits of Baby (24 page)

‘Sorry,' Robin said, ‘I can't stand it.'

‘Pull out the plug,' Faber suggested but it was too late and Robin had answered.

‘Hello?' he said.

‘Robin?'

‘Dad?'

‘Sorry. I must have dialled home without thinking.'

‘No, you didn't. Did you want to talk to Faber?'

‘Er … Oh. Well, yes I did.'

‘Passing you over,' Robin said. ‘It's Dad,' he told Faber.

‘Hello?' said Faber. ‘Peter. How are you?… Good.… What?… When?' Robin had started doing it to Faber again but Faber shoved him away quite hard then grasped his wrist as he concentrated on whatever Dad was telling him. Robin sat up and watched. Faber's eyes had narrowed slightly with fear and he was breathing fast. He hung up.

‘What is it?' Robin asked.

‘Someone's ill. Very ill. An old friend.' He let go of Robin's wrist, jumped up and started tugging on clothes. ‘I've got to go. I'll just fix up Iras.'

‘I'll pick her up,' Robin offered.

‘No, honestly. She's happy going to Dodie's,' Faber promised him. ‘But, look, stay as long as you like. Stay till I get back. I should be home in a couple of hours but I'll call from the hospital if I'm going to be later.'

‘OK.'

Robin dressed too, feeling in the way for the first time since setting foot on Faber's territory. While Faber made rapid calls to Iras's special school and to Dodie, Robin walked slowly downstairs. Faber had given him a set of keys days ago but suddenly he felt uncomfortable about remaining alone in the building. Faber clattered down the stairs, swore because he had forgotten his wallet, clattered up to find it, clattered down again, kissed Robin and ran out. He slammed the door and Robin noticed, as if for the first time, the pride of place he had given to a wonderful charcoal sketch for the portrait of Candida and her first-born. He followed the gentle curve of her supporting arm beneath the baby and the answering outline of her proffered breast. Then he felt an attack coming on.

He called his mind's trouble madness not illness, because it had neither cause nor rational treatment. At its centre was a terrible void, an area of which he either knew or recalled nothing. Around the void was a kind of trumpet mouth of depression and uncontrol and around that were tendrils of disorder that reached into his conscious mind. He saw nothing untoward, no black serpents coiling through brickwork, no putrescent eruptions of the floor; the attacks came through his ears. Even the slightest sounds, no,
particularly
the slightest sounds, such as the rustle of his shirt sleeve, the breath leaving his nose or a fly at a distant window, became charged with hostility. He had had these attacks often as a child, in isolation and with no ill after-effects. His mother called them his ‘feelings' and so tidied them away along with bad dreams and his dislike of the space under the bath. She thought they were growing pains and he didn't like to alarm her. She was easily alarmed.

Robin's ‘feelings' made reading impossible, for the most harmless words – elderflower, toothbrush, looking-glass – were vocalised in his head to mock him. Occasionally he tried to interrupt the sounds, beating them down with the sound of his voice, but his voice no longer sounded like his own. On Whelm, Luke, instructed by the Abbot, had followed a similar course to that proscribed for men convinced they are possessed by evil spirits. He would seek to calm Robin with music, unambiguous poetry or simple words of love; either his own or Christ's.

Robin forced himself to the record-player. He couldn't choose a record of his own as this would have involved too many words and too much rustling. Inevitably, since no one had played anything since Iras's exercise session last night, the record on the turntable was Nina Simone's. He jumped the tone arm to the third track: ‘He's got the whole world in his hands.'

Robin crouched with his back safely to the wall and met Nina's gaze from the record sleeve. Suddenly he could see what Iras meant, but he saw more than her. Nina was telling him that God and Death were the same.

Twenty-Seven

Candida's day had tried her sorely. One of her breakfast guests had been run down by a lorry the night before. Ordinarily she could have filled his untimely vacancy with an obituary hastily cobbled together from ‘Death Row', the video and clippings archive kept for the purpose, but he had been only a minor unrecorded playwright. Out to publicise his latest glum offering, he had found a slot on the show solely by virtue of his former relation to one of the producers. The only self-publicists consistently available to appear at dawn after seven hours' notice were politicians, so Candida had found herself saddled with a spontaneous debate on the free market which lost half her usual audience and over-ran disastrously. The more antagonistic of the two MPs, a man she used to admire, kept interrupting her summary with, ‘Ah-ha! You see? That bears out my point
exactly
!' which meant that the all-important weather bulletin spilled over in turn into a crass but equally important location report from outside a royal labour ward. Her autocue had gone awry no less than three times after that. The pathetic excuse for this being that the usual operator had also enjoyed some involvement with the deceased playwright and had only learnt the sad news when Candida announced it on air. The newsprint summarist had gaily passed her a tabloid where an unrecognisably hideous photograph of her in her puppy-fat teens had been printed with the caption ‘GUESS WHO??!!' This less than perfect morning had been rounded off by a dressing-down from the studio boss on the subject of tumbling viewing figures which he somehow related to her dress sense. He had snapped his fingers at her most offensively and told her to ‘run along and fix her hair or something'.

Candida's coiffure had admittedly gone slightly to seed since Robin's return. She had paid an amount even she found painful to have it ‘fixed' on the way home, and was regarding the treacherous result in her bathroom mirror when Jasper ran in.

‘Mummy, Mummy!'

‘I've told you before
not
to come racing in here when the door's shut without knocking,' she snapped. ‘My bathroom is
not
a playground.'

‘Sorry,' he whimpered, now seeming lost for words.

‘Well? What is it?' she demanded.

‘It's Andrea Maitland but she doesn't have the Holy Man with her.'

By the time Candida had tried on and rejected a headscarf and come down to greet her, Andrea had already rung the bell and been let as far as the hall by Samantha.

‘What is it about this family,' Candida wondered, ‘that they think they can just turn up and find me both in and available? Still, the parents once told me they regarded me as one of their own,' she reminded herself, ‘and now I regard their son with an affection more than sisterly.'

‘Andrea!' she exclaimed. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.' She made as if to kiss the older woman's cheek but Andrea was already starting forward to the sitting-room.

‘Not at all,' she said briskly, her face unusually frosty. ‘Sorry to turn up out of the blue. I'm afraid we have to talk. Shall we go in here?'

She was already in there. Candida waited, trying to huff and puff a little, but all her will seemed to have gone the way of her hair. She followed and sat across the room from her visitor.

‘Has something awful happened?' she asked.

‘Not recently,' said Andrea, ‘But, yes.'

‘Tell me.'

‘You stole Dob's lover. Jake and Robin were in love and you jealously worked on Jake's weak nature to steal him.'

Candida gasped.

‘I hardly think this is the … Really, Andrea, it was so long ago.' She found a trace of indignation which enabled her to stand.

‘Sit down,' Andrea told her. ‘I haven't finished.

Candida sat.

‘We all thought Robin ran away afterwards to be a monk,' Andrea said. ‘I've just discovered that these last eight years he's been having a complete mental breakdown, entirely due to your envious meddling.'

‘But … Poor Dob. I had no idea.'

‘Of course you didn't.'

‘Is he better? I mean, he
seems
better. He must be as he wouldn't be out. Home, I mean.'

Andrea was staring at her in disbelief.

‘Is that honestly
all
you can think to say? Don't you feel any remorse?'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake, Andrea,' she shouted, jumping up. ‘What do you think? I loved Dob. He was my childhood friend. Of course I feel bad. I feel awful. So will Jake when he hears. But you've misunderstood.'

‘Well, you'd better put me right.'

‘I hardly think it's your business.'

‘Of course it's my bloody business. You've broken my son. Thanks to you I lost him, we lost him, for eight whole years. And now he's changed. You must have noticed.'

‘He's just older. We're all older.'

‘It's more than that.'

‘Look, Perdita needs her feed and Jake'll be home soon.'

‘They can keep a little.' Andrea rubbed a hard hand across her forehead. Her wedding ring left a brief white line there. She changed her tone. ‘Look, please Candida. Tell me. Tell me everything. You never have.'

Candida watched Jasper helping Samantha take clothes off the line. She turned back to Andrea and sat down. ‘It's all so long ago,' she complained.

‘Please.'

‘They weren't lovers,' Candida muttered. ‘None of us were. Of course Dob had an almighty crush on Jake but he never did anything about it. I know. I was there. I even urged him on. He was convinced that if he said anything, Jake would run a mile. I mean, Jake knew about the crush, but Dob made a joke of it as though it were all a pose. Eventually Jake proposed to me and I turned him down. The next thing I knew, Robin turned up in my house and attacked me.'

‘Physically?'

Candida hesitated.

‘No. He threw a lot of things around. He shouted. He wept. He was obviously drunk and that was the last we saw of him. I rang you the next day. You remember.'

‘I remember.'

‘Where did you hear this story about them being lovers?'

‘Dob told me but I exaggerated. They weren't lovers, not yet, but Jake had made, well, proposals to Robin and Robin says he panicked and pretended to be revolted. The next evening Jake was being mortified and apologetic, saying “Never mind, I've been to bed with Candida a couple of times and I see now it was all just confusion. It was her I wanted and we're going to get married.'

Candida froze.

‘At least,' Andrea qualified, ‘That was the gist of it.'

‘My God,' spat Candida. ‘The little jerk. The
bastard
.'

There was a sound of high performance engine and crushed gravel from beside the house. ‘That's him,' Candida muttered, half oblivious of Andrea now. Andrea jumped up.

‘I must go,' she said. ‘Oh. Oh dear.' She wavered, then darted forward and patted Candida's shoulder. ‘I didn't realise and now I've gone and stirred things up. Candida, I didn't mean … I only wanted the truth. Oh dear.'

Andrea fled through the house. Candida heard her greetings fluttered at Jake in the porch and her trotting shoes on the pavement a few seconds later. There was the unmistakable thunder of a Volkswagen starting up then peace except for Jasper going for some sparrows with a plastic machine gun. Finally Jake popped his head around the door, said a chirpy hello and vanished.

‘Jake?'

He came back.

‘Yup? Hey! I like the hair-do.'

‘Andrea Maitland's just been here.'

‘Yes. We met on the steps. Any trouble with Jasper?'

‘No. Nothing like that.'

He came in and flopped noisily onto the sofa beside her, clearly not listening.

‘You bastard!' she hissed.

Stung, he laughed,

‘What? What have I done now?'

She lashed out, not to slap but to punch him hard, on the jaw. It hurt her more than she'd expected but she followed through with another punch, this time to his shoulder. Taken by surprise he had fallen off the sofa. She stood and kicked his shin fiercely. Twice. After an initial yelp he took the blows quietly, merely sucking in air through his teeth. She stood back and stared at him as he clambered onto the sofa, rubbing his leg.

‘Jasper's outside the window,' he muttered and touched his jaw.

‘I don't fucking care,' she said. ‘Think back, Jake. Think back eight long eventful happy years to a certain evening just before our finals.'

‘Yes?' he frowned.

‘You told Robin we'd had sex. You told him we were going to get married. You little shit!' She kicked his shin again. He struck back this time, setting the sole of his shoe firmly against her thigh and shoving so that she toppled back and sat down hard, striking her coccyx on a wooden chair arm as she went down.

‘Cunt!' he shouted and hurled several large books at her in quick succession. He was making a strange coughing noise as he did so and she realised that he was crying. Jake never cried. Ever. They never fought. She sat up, rubbing her back and watched. He stopped throwing things and blew his nose.

‘You fancied him,' she said. ‘You tried to get him into bed only he didn't want you.'

He stood and walked out. She heard him calling softly for Jasper in the garden, turned and saw him hugging the child to him. Milky white, Jasper stared over his father's shoulder towards the window where she watched. There was a knock at the door.

‘Yes?'

It was Samantha.

‘Sorry to butt in like, Candy, but Perdy-M's crying fit to bust. Shall I give her another bottle or …'

‘I'll feed her,' said Candida, striding out past her, ‘And don't call me Candy. Ever.'

Perdita was roaring. Her fists wrenched at the cot sheet as she sucked in tiny lungfuls of air and with each fresh bellow her alarming shade of scarlet intensified. Strings of spit webbed her toothless mouth and her eyes had sunk into veined wrinkles of fury. Candida kneeled on the carpet, rested her head on her arms and watched her daughter's miniature despair.