Loving Amélie (8 page)

We attended our lessons for two
years, until I was twelve and Angé was fourteen. We loved them. We painted
still life; and sometimes real people would come and sit for us. There was even
a bubble-maker, so we could try our luck at copying them, with their impossible
shiny wet surfaces!” Her face lit up and faded in the same moment in readiness
for her conclusion: “
Then
our mother told us Mademoiselle Latour – Miss Prim and
Proper – Miss
Vos mains sont toujours crasseuses!
(She made a comical gesture of
holding up the hands of her twelve year old self, grubby with pencil lead and
paint, for Chris to inspect with a smile) – was
pregnant
!”

“Oh, my word,” he said. “No
more lessons?”

Amélie looked coyly amused. Her
dimple appeared: the perfect punctuation of her blushes.

“Well, not for me,” she said.
“My sister carried on; but I did not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was
outraged
!”
she breathed in self mockery.

Chris pondered this.

“You thought she was a wanton
woman, so you ditched her lessons? Even though you enjoyed them so much?”

“Yes. I was a little fool.”

“Was there disapproval of her
at home?”

“Not really. My father was
affected very little by people that were of no consequence to him; and my mother
was not a prude.”

“So you were the family
prude?!”

“
No
,” Amélie complained, gently. “I was
young and I felt my world had turned upside down; that nothing would be the
same again. I was very sad when Angé went off on Saturdays without me: she
would give me her big sister eyes, like she was the clever one! Mademoiselle
Latour came to the house, with her great stomach, to find me out; to encourage
me back to the class. But it was impossible.”

“Why
 
impossible?”

Amélie shrugged, and slipped
from the sanctity of her white sheet into Chris’s arms; her searching mouth
indicating she had done with her story.

“I couldn’t go back. It was
final,” she said.

“Whatever happened to the cat?”
he asked, and they kissed hungrily; still newly in love.

                                                                       
*

He began to wonder whether
waking up
every
morning with a baby could feel like an epiphany: as though the deep draughts of
sleep he took between bottles and nappies were nourishing him on a more
profound level and sharpening his senses.

Sara answered his call at her
desk in the recruitment agency she ran in South Kensington:

“Good morning, Chris.” Her tone
implied there might be a “What now?” to follow.

“Two words,” he replied. “Tash
and Ian.”

Chris and baby Amélie headed
for Euston Station without talking much to anyone else. He had decided that
other people’s opinions – even Sara’s - were crowding his head and
getting in the way of his instincts. Didn’t mothers rely on their instincts?
(He reserved judgement of his own baby’s mother in this regard in a tender part
of his being, for now) Why should fathers be that different?

He and Ian Thompson went back a
long way. They had been in the cubs together; and Chris would have described
Ian as his best friend, had his mum not always insisted it should be Peter.

He was now the headmaster of a
comprehensive school in Milton Keynes.

Chris alighted from the train
carriage at Bletchley, where the guard had to take a literal view of his job
description that day by keeping watch outside the ladies’ toilet which doubled as
the babies’ changing room. A couple of teenage girls, who may have been at odds
with their school timetable, insisted on coming in, despite the portly guard’s
brave attempts at dissuading them for a few minutes on the grounds of modesty.
He gave way when one of the girls said: “We’re not bovvered, mate; we only want
tampons”; guessing rightly that modesty would not be an issue in this
particular situation.

“Is that your baby?” asked the
bolder of the two, having assaulted the dispensing machine with a rough handful
of coins and then verbal abuse. She pushed her box of sanitary products in the
breast pocket of her non-uniform jacket: it was a squeeze, next to her
cigarettes.

“It is,” replied Chris, adding:
“Finders keepers.”

Busy with Amélie’s poppers, he assumed
the silence meant his humour had been lost on his lavatory companions.

“Pretty, i’n’t she? She your
granddaughter?”

Chris looked up sharply from
the baby’s kicking legs to see if he had underestimated their sense of fun. It
seemed not. They were looking on with what he could only think of as worryingly
blank expressions – and to think Ian had to converse with such specimens
of young womanhood every day!

“No,” he said, resolutely.
“She’s my daughter.”

The words hung in the
malodorous air of the public convenience like a loud, self-congratulation. Girl
one nudged girl two, sniggered, and they left him wrestling Amélie back into
her carrier, understanding suddenly what men felt like when their chests were
said to fill with pride.

“How are you, my old mate?”
said Ian, moving round from his desk, smoothing down his tie. It was a garish
tie that leapt out from a bland shirt and suit against the backdrop of a fairly
bland school office – probably a gift from a pupil. They embraced,
careful not to disturb the sleeping bundle between their chests.

It had been a month or so since
their last meeting: Ian had come into town to buy computer bits from the type
of sale that signposts people in from Oxford Circus to a disused church filled
with cut price gadgets and gizmos. It was an afternoon of recreation Chris had
politely declined; but he had joined his friend for beers and a chilli
afterwards.

“You look better than the last
time I saw you! Fatherhood suits you.”

“Well, it’s only been a couple
of days, Ian. Feels like a lifetime.”

They sat across the desk from
each other: Chris thinking of the girls he had just encountered – and of
the many others like them – who would have no appreciation of how
fortunate they were to have a man like his friend Ian Thompson weighing the
balance of their fate in his capable and committed hands. He had been
recognised publicly for taking over the headship at Kingsmead School and
turning it from a failing institution into what was termed a centre of
excellence. There had been a visit from the Secretary of State for Education;
and a new sign erected on the road outside in a modern font, that bore a
rampant lion, complete with crown, to signify that ‘traditional values were
preserved within a progressive agenda’. Parents moved house to ensure their
offspring were afforded places at Ian’s school: something that Chris had
contemplated at the time with a smug sense of the ridiculousness and the vanity
of the twentieth century parent – and something that he would now, no
doubt, start dwelling on seriously himself.

“Any more word from Amélie?”
the headmaster asked.

“No.”

“Let’s have a look at her
then.”

Ian relieved Chris of his body
bundle, and took the baby to the window, where he perched her adeptly on the
underside of his supporting arm, easing back the bunched up clothing from
around her small, creased face.

Chris, for his part, stretched
out his back; and toyed with the idea of lying down on Ian’s hard desk.

“Tash is on her way,” said Ian:
his words were hardly spoken before his wife’s Corsa was heard reversing into a
space in the quiet car park below, and Tash’s face appeared at the window,
tapping the glass and beaming at the sight of Ian with Amélie in his arms.

“Oh, Chris!” She hugged him
tight: conferring joy and sympathy in one simple squeeze.

She stood next to her husband.
It was a familiar scene with practised yet frustrated players: they were two
kind, honourable people. As a lad, Ian had always looked out for the underdog,
and, more often than not, shared out his stuff, whether it was a bag of sweets
or a coveted football magazine. Tash, whom Ian had met a lot later in life, was
known to make meals for some of the students she met as a teacher at a sixth
form college; offering them beds for the night when they were let down by the
other adults in their lives. They were the best sort of friends you could wish
for; and the best sort of colleagues to work alongside; and yet, seemingly,
they were to be cruelly denied the opportunity to be the best sort of parents.

Chris watched them with his
daughter; and knew they would make the perfect parents for her. Amélie would
want for nothing that was essential to grow up and become, in their image, the
best sort of citizen: self-assured, accomplished and good.

His heart was seized with the
desire to be her dad. It would be a haphazard journey for both of them; much of
it spent more in the grass verges than on the main road, perhaps; but the only
journey baby Amélie Christina should take, from their mutual starting point.
Love.

“And you would want us to stay
all week, Chris?” said Tash, all eyes, moving her gaze reluctantly from where
Amélie was wriggling in her husband’s embrace towards Chris.

“That’s what I was hoping for,”
he replied. “I told Peter I would be back to work as soon as possible; and then
we will be off.”

“And how is the bistro?” said
Tash, automatically, as though it mattered.

“Doing well. With or without
me.”

“We will be with you after
school, then,” she said. She had taken the baby and was swaying her with an air
of experience: the affectionate auntie, who had read every book on childcare
and cared for every child she could whilst waiting for her own elusive babe to
materialise. Despite having suffered a number of failed attempts at assisted
conception, Tash was not for giving up yet. At thirty four – ten years
her husband’s junior – she was determined to confound the statisticians
and give it at least one more shot.

“This can really make a
difference, you know, caring for a baby” she breathed, excitedly, the ends of
her curled up fringe twitching against her eyelashes as she blinked at Chris.
“I am so grateful you thought of us. I guess it sort of takes our minds off the
trauma of it all.”

“And anything that does that is
most
welcome,”
said Ian, with a frankness that spoke to Chris of his friends’ shared plight.

They arrived at his flat later
that day with their bags; and he moved them into his bedroom. He made up a bed
for himself in the spare room. The plan was set that Tash and Ian would take
care of the baby while he was at work that week; and to give him a break from
the night time routine.

“I shall be in charge of
dinner,” he had announced. “There are always good leftovers from the
restaurant.”

“We will never have eaten so
well,” said Tash, warming to her task of mothering Amélie and preparing her for
bed. “Really, beans on toast is what Ian is used to!”

Chris watched his two friends
applying themselves to their new routine: doing all the things he had been
doing for the last few days, except motivated by something different. It was
hope: an intense hope, tainted, perhaps, with desperation. His own had been
necessity; now nudged along by what he realised was, quite simply, devotion.

 
Tash found her need to order the baby’s things into her own,
more efficient system too great to put off until the next day, when it might
have been more tactfully achieved. Meanwhile, Chris ordered takeaway curry; and
the boys drank half a bottle of red wine.

“I think this has been one of
my better ideas!” he said, as they toasted their week ahead.

“You had to have one
one
day,”
said Ian, with a playful shunt.

They had once been boys who
knocked on people’s doors and ran away; scrumping apples from trees before
scarpering on their bikes. Now they were facing fifty, both of them trying to
be parents.

They looked on in admiration as
Tash bathed Amélie, who seemed, to Chris, as if she might almost have grown
since yesterday – if that were possible – as she opened her shiny
brown eyes with interest at her new carer, and even seemed to ‘talk’ a little
during the ritual.

“Auntie Tash is clearly a hit,”
said Chris.

“God, mate, you’re lucky,” said
Ian, after a pleasant pause: and a tear rolled down his wife’s cheek and
plopped into the bath water.

Chapter Eight

“My friend wants to know if you will go out with
her.”

This was from Naomi Jones, a
girl who was unpopular because she wore National Health glasses and because she
smelled as though she came from a damp house where having baths was considered
either extravagant or a waste of time.

Aged ten, Chris had been
cheerfully occupied in a game of marbles with Ian Thompson and Stuart Swift: he
was on a winning streak and had just bagged his latest “china”. He turned the
soft pouch containing his booty around in his hand, enjoying the sound the
marbles made grinding against each other.