Little Bits of Baby (7 page)

He pushed open the door to her room. It was only a baby's room, really. He had often asked her if she would like them to move to somewhere larger, or at least if she would let him buy her a sofa for her friends to sit on. This would have made it a kind of sitting-room for her, but she had always declined. He asked once if the smallness of the room made her feel safe. She had rubbed her wrists and given him one of her equivocal ‘well's which they both understood should be taken as yeses. He stood in the doorway and watched her tapping at her word processor keyboard. In the old days, before the advent of this domineering machine, she would always raise a hand in the air, her left hand, stopping whatever she was doing until he had taken it in his and kissed its sticky palm. Now that his entrances were all but ignored, he contented himself with the occasional obstinate kiss on the crown of her head, where the mouse hair swirled in a perfect whorl. He kissed her there now.

‘Has she gone?' she asked.

‘The child speaks! I was beginning to forget.'

‘Well?'

‘She's gone. She sends her best wishes; she didn't like to disturb the young authoress.'

‘She did well.'

‘How's it coming?'

‘Mmh.'

‘Translation?' he asked, rubbing her narrow shoulders with two fingers of each hand.

‘I mean just-so.'

‘You're tense. Your shoulders feel like iron. Have you got a headache?'

‘No.'

She was lying.

‘Well, even if you haven't, it's time for a little parental control.'

‘Oh, Faber!' she whined, ‘I'm working.'

‘You were working. Now it's time for a little exercise.'

‘But …'

‘Exercise. On the bike. Now.'

‘Can't I do it after lunch?'

‘Who said anything about lunch?'

‘Isn't that why you came up?'

‘Well, as a matter of fact it was. How do scrambled eggs sound?'

‘They sound like what we had yesterday.'

‘But I cook them so well. Now, come on. You can ride for ten minutes while I make lunch and then you can go back to your work this afternoon.'

‘Oh, all right. But only if you put a record on for me. It makes it less boring.' She followed him out onto the landing where the exercise cycle stood. ‘Put on that Nina record.'

‘
My Baby Just Cares for Me
?'

‘Yes but put on the album, not that short one.'

‘OK.'

She clambered astride the machine.

‘How far have I ridden this year?' she asked.

‘Not far enough. We don't want you getting pasty and fat.'

‘It wouldn't matter,' she claimed, starting slowly to pedal, ‘I wouldn't have to see myself in the mirror.'

‘True, but you'd feel yourself wobbling when you sat down and getting all hot and sweaty as you squeezed into clothes that didn't fit you anymore.'

‘Eeurgh!'

‘Quite. Now ride.'

‘Put the record on.'

‘Put the record on, please?'

‘Put the record on, please.'

The needle was almost as old as the record player and the record was dusty and scratched from over-use. Nina Simone had to sing through an electric haze and compete with the oily hiss of the cogs on the exercise bike and the clunk of its constantly shifting handlebars. As Faber walked back through the studio to the kitchen and began to slice bread and crack eggs, he heard her groaning, ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me'.

Iras's room was the only unillustrated part of the building. She quite understandably had no time for pictures, but hung her walls with last year's experiments in ‘braille painting'. She occasionally spent her pocket money in a florist's on the Common. She chose on a basis of what smelled or merely felt good so would frequently return with an armful of plain foliage, ripped from someone's shrubbery as often as honestly bought.

The studio walls were crowded with Faber's huge, gaunt canvases; the unsold, piercing first drafts of portraits of generous friends, rich acquaintance, or interesting strangers. Most recently he had invited in a trio of female drunks. He had passed them every day for months where they sat by the Temperance drinking fountain, and without fail they hailed him,

‘Wotcha blacky!'

‘Is it true – you know – what they say about black guys' winkles?'

‘Ere!' Ain'tcha got lovely skin, then?'

‘Ooh! Can I touch too?'

He would smile widely and there usually followed a brief exchange about the weather, the litter in the park or the fact that the Temperance fountain had dried up. One morning a few weeks ago they had complained in unison about the unbearable heat and he had asked them if, in return for a cold beer, a fiver each and a few hours in a big cool room, they would let him immortalise them in paint. He had quite forgotten inviting Andrea for lunch, so she was astonished to arrive, flowers in hand, to find him sketching and photographing the garrulous, unwashed threesome who were arranged on the dining-table. Mercifully it was not to be a nude study, not wholly. The sketches and photographs were now pinned at random on a broad piece of pinboard in a corner. The first three paintings taken from them hung on ropes from the central beams. The fourth, had not progressed beyond the head and shoulders of the central figure; a lean, tallow-skinned woman called Winnie. She was throwing back her head to laugh, revealing her chicken neck and gold tooth.

The main wall, its base littered with a jumble of leaning canvases and empty frames, was ruled by Faber's favourite work to date: a huge charcoal drawing he had made for a portrait of the breakfast broadcaster Candida Thackeray with her baby son. He had known her sister-in-law at art college and this generous commission had come a few months after Candida's buying one of his sketches at the graduate show there. It was a marked contrast to her sharp, public image and caught a momentary expression almost of pain as she stared down at the baby in her grasp. Even had Andrea not told him first, he gathered from the newspapers that Ms Thackeray (alias Browne) had just been delivered of a bouncing baby girl. The hopes he entertained of a repeat commission were only faint; the Brownes were notoriously fashion-conscious and unlikely to repeat themselves.

Elsewhere there was not a vertical surface unillustrated. The walls of the kitchen cupboards, where some fathers might have stuck their daughter's adventures in poster paint or potato printing, were papered with newspaper cuttings interspersed with carefully selected postcards of morning-after gratitude or kitsch ones of holiday smugness. The bathroom walls were hung with a variety of mirrors and among the often unframed landscapes and still lifes on the galleried landing were plaster casts of Iras's left hand and left foot, made on her every birthday since her arrival and placed on a shelf within her grasp. Faber's bedroom was devoted to sleep and death. Mainly sleep. There was a painting he had made of Iras asleep on the grass with a book and a cushion. He had a collection of prints and paintings of sleeping figures (and occasionally dead ones) hung there, and a skull on his bedside table which served as a bookend. The latter had come away from its skeletal body when Iras had been allowed one cherry brandy two many last Christmas and tried her hand at a
danse macabre
. The headless remainder was now elegantly draped in black watered silk and arranged in a broken corner of the studio.

Iras suffered all this visual prejudice in good part, regarding it as a weakness of Faber's to be humoured and foreborne. Challenged, she made a brave show of being interested in the pictures for their smell (mirrors smelled different from windows, she said, and paintings from either), their feel, or the difference they made to each room's accoustic, but he could tell that she was only being kind.

Nina Simone sang ‘Don't Smoke in Bed' and followed up with her peculiarly stately version of ‘He's Got the Whole World in His Hands'. The scrambled eggs were ready too soon. Faber switched off the gas then buttered toast for Iras and spread margarine on Ryvita for himself.

‘Iras!' he yelled at the ceiling. ‘Lunch!' Then he reached for the telephone and dialled. ‘Yes,' he said, when someone answered, ‘I'd like Briar Ward please.'

‘Putting you through,' said the receptionist.

‘Hello, Briar Ward,' said a nurse.

‘Hello. I'm ringing to ask after a friend there. Marcus Carling.'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘It's you.'

‘Yes.'

‘You really ought to come in, you know, if you're a friend of his.'

‘How is he?'

‘Worse. Much worse. Visiting hours are nine to twelve-thirty then two-thirty until eight. Who shall I say called?'

Iras was coming downstairs, singing. Faber hung up and busied himself spooning the now rather flaky scrambled eggs onto two plates.

‘Ride far?' he asked, setting the plate before her.

‘Yeah,' she said, reaching for where the pepper always was. She sang on. ‘He's got the little bits of baby in his hands. He's got the little …'

‘Itsy-bitsy.'

‘What?'

‘It's “itsy-bitsy baby,”' he pointed out, sitting beside her and breaking his Ryvita. ‘Not little bits of baby.'

‘You're wrong,' she said, shaking her head and reaching for where the salt always was. ‘Maybe in your version it's itsy-bitsy but the way Nina sings it, it comes out as “little bits”. I prefer it that way anyway.'

‘Why's that?'

‘Well,' she set down her knife and fork and put her head on one side the way she always did when she explained a rudimentary truth to an idiotic world. ‘If you listen carefully instead of singing along, you'll hear that she never says who “he” is.'

‘Well, everyone knows it's about God.'

‘I don't,' she said. ‘I think it's about Death. It makes much more sense that way. Serene but menacing. And “little bits of baby” sounds harder and more frail. Itsy-bitsy's too cute.'

Faber told her to eat her scrambled egg before it got cold and they ate on in silence.

Eight

Robin had told her he would come home soon but he doubted that she expected him back this quickly. When he finished talking to her on the Abbot's ancient telephone, he had imagined he would need a few days to grow accustomed to the idea of leaving. Two or three.

It needn't be for long, he told himself, I can come straight back if I'm not ready.

He told the Abbot, who went on to say the same things.

‘You needn't feel you have to stay away,' he said. ‘You have nothing to prove by suffering. If you don't feel you can cope, if you're not ready for it, come straight back. Never mind the christening. I'm sure your friends would understand.'

But then the Abbot went straight into organising a farewell supper for him, with a mead allowance and a honey-crusted ham and Robin saw that there was no need to hang around. He was ready. He would go tomorrow. He went back to the orchard to tell Luke and finish picking apples. After the first few questions, the news made Luke broody and they worked in silence. Robin knew he was there from sickness, not piety, but Luke's reaction and then the slightly hectic jollity of the farewell supper made it seem as though he had failed somewhere and they were kindly covering his failure with a show of celebration. He hated their mead and as always it made him long for sleep but he forced himself to stay awake for compline.

He had never been in all those years. He used to lie awake and hear the singing from his room but no one had ever told him to come and he had never felt interested enough to suggest it. But the end-of-term spirit had taken him, so he went. They were pleased and handed him a book with words in it.

It was a short, lyrical service; a sort of late-night spiritual insurance, full of lines about protecting us from the devil who prowls like a lion, or something. When they had to sing,

‘Keep me as the apple of thine eye,' Robin glanced over at Luke, who was watching him carefully as ever, and he smiled. This was mean, he knew.

He said his goodbyes all round before going to bed then got up early and unseen to hitch a lift ashore with a fisherman. There was a red flag the monks hoisted by the cottage on the beach if they wanted someone to take them across, not unlike those orange signs that light up and say TAXI at night outside old mansion blocks. As luck would have it, Robin caught the post boat after about four minutes' wait. As it chugged him back to the mainland he leaned against some greasy fish crates and watched Whelm dwindle. The rule was that, before boarding a boat, one had to lower the red flag again and the fisherman had duly done this after dumping the post in the cottage for collection. As Robin watched, someone ran down to shore and hoisted it again.

‘Someone being sent out to drag you back, I reckon,' his water-cabbie shouted from the wheelhouse. ‘You done something you shouldn't? Eh?'

‘No,' Robin told him.

‘Not said your prayers, maybe.' He chuckled and crossed himself. It was hard to tell if he did this in mockery or superstition. ‘Don't worry,' he went on. ‘I'm not turning back this far out. He can just wait his turn.'

When he came to climb on the train to London, Robin scanned the thin crowd boarding with him but saw no familiar face.

He had almost no luggage – just the few things he had first brought with him and a beeswax candle made by the sisters of Corry which the Abbot asked him to pass on to his mother. He had also handed over the small brown envelope in which he had sealed Robin's fistful of cash on his arrival. Eight years had dwindled its already paltry value, but Robin still had his cheque-book, his wallet and his fountain pen, all three unused since his arrival. His mother had posted him four new cheque-cards in the course of his stay, which the Abbot had kindly intercepted and kept safe. The ticket clerk eyed Robin suspiciously as he now produced all four, gleaming new and still unsigned. Robin's signature had changed, with neglect, into a pale reflection of its former, italicised self but, with some effort, he managed to sign both card and cheque in roughly similar styles. He caught the clerk's stare and laughed in explanation.