Stop the Clock (30 page)

So she rang Natalie and did something that did not come naturally, but that she suspected she was going to have to learn to do more often; she asked for help. Natalie came quickly, did not object to sitting round waiting with her until she was finally given her discharge letter, and carried everything up the four flights of stairs at the other end without complaint. She offered to stay, but Tina said she should get back to Matilda; Tina’s parents were already on their way over.

Tina couldn’t remember the last time her parents had
been to the flat. Visitors of all kinds, whether intrusive or more usually confined to their own territory, were another feature of new motherhood that she had not anticipated.

There was this to say for a stay in hospital, however short; it made you appreciate having a space to call your own. She’d come to see the flat as a bit of a tip, a dumping-ground for her eyes only, but now it struck her as bright and light and full of things she liked. The big wrought-iron bed, the piles of books and papers, the photo montage of her friends, the ormolu carriage clock . . . nothing was impersonal, everything was hers. She was no longer a numbered patient on a ward; she was Tina Fox, mother of William Fox, and she was home.

When Cecily and Robert arrived it was immediately obvious how pleased and relieved they were – almost pleased and relieved enough to overlook the misfortune of her single status, but not quite.

Cecily put pink roses in a vase and filled the freezer compartment in the top of Tina’s fridge, plus two of the shelves beneath it, with portions of home-made lasagne and Bolognese sauce and shepherd’s pie. She’d brought a cake, too – chocolate – and Tina, still baggy-bellied but too ravenous to care, asked for an indelicately large slice and wolfed it. Meanwhile Cecily settled on the sofa and ceremonially held her new grandson, and Robert submitted to Cecily’s gentle admonishments and held him too.

Robert didn’t look very sure of himself. He looked as
if he feared being unmanned, but was moved in spite of himself by cradling this tiny scrap of his own flesh and blood, his unforeseen and probably only descendant. Perhaps it was this that prompted Tina to say, ‘There you are, Dad, a male heir to carry on the Fox name. It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it? You see, there are some advantages to me not being married.’

The fond look on Robert’s face gave way to irritation. ‘I don’t think it’s something to be flippant about, Tina.’

‘Robert,’ Cecily murmured, ‘remember what we talked about.’

‘Well, has his father even seen him yet?’

‘Dad, I only just got out of hospital.’

‘Plenty of time for all that,’ Cecily said, and Tina was grateful that her mother was defending her, but would have preferred it if Cecily had looked a little less pained.

She had told her parents a little about Dan: his name, his profession, where he lived, his West Country roots. She wanted Robert and Cecily to think well of Dan, so she had assured them that he wanted to be part of William’s life and was keen to contribute financially, money that she had reluctantly decided to accept. However, she also didn’t want to get their hopes up, and so she had told them that she wasn’t in love with him and never had been.

‘Boys need their fathers,’ Robert grumbled.

‘And daughters don’t, I suppose,’ Tina muttered.

That did it. Robert was not inclined to engage with her, or William, any further, and occupied himself with the newspaper and the crossword.

Cecily, saddened, as on many previous occasions, by her husband’s penchant for stubborn, sulky moods and her daughter’s willingness to provoke them, busied herself with housework. She found an apron and some rubber gloves to put on, and these accessories contrasted oddly with her silk blouse, well-cut slacks and trim, elegant frame, as if she’d pulled them on to rehearse a part in a play. It was an unfamiliar sight, because for many years Tina’s family home had been kept spick and span by the help, but it quickly became apparent that lack of practice had not diminished Cecily’s cleaning skills.

While Tina bathed, Cecily moved the sofa and vacuumed, unasked, the curdled dust that had collected underneath it; and when Tina awoke from a deep sleep, more a bout of unconsciousness than a nap, to find that it was pitch black outside, the whole flat smelt of lemon bleach.

She was half relieved when her parents left, but felt, too, a strange tug of sadness, as if she had just been abandoned. This was it, this was really it; she was on her own.

But, damn it, there was a whole world out there, and she was still connected to it. She was not just a woman home alone with a newborn baby on a cold, dark winter’s night; she was not confined to these four walls.

She got William off to sleep and settled him into the cot, then checked the
Post
website. They hadn’t yet put anything online to say she’d had the baby, though she’d sent Jeremy a message about it. But everything was probably out of sync because of New Year. It didn’t
mean that her column was no longer regarded as of interest.

As sometimes happens when you go looking for confirmation of your well-earned place in the scheme of things, she stumbled across something that made her feel even more at sea.

It was a photo.
The Rt. Hon. Justin Dandridge QC, MP enjoying the New Year’s Day brass band parade in Shepstowe’s market square, at the heart of his north Devon constituency, accompanied by the fragrant Mrs Virginia Dandridge.

Justin and Ginny were pictured standing close together, wrapped up warm against the cold. Presenting a unified front to the world? Or genuinely united against possible affront – including the threat that Tina might once have presented?

The fragrant Mrs Virginia Dandridge!
But Ginny did look as if she probably smelt rather good? fresh and floral – and was not, like Tina at that particular moment, emanating a bitter, iron-heavy undertone of dried blood.

William started crying again, and Tina was grateful to be needed – although, as the night wore on and he fed and fed and then demanded to feed some more, she was drained beyond astonishment that anyone could need her quite so much. He had dozed so sweetly most of the day, but now, like a vampire, he wanted blood: milk from her blood, the milk that she wasn’t yet producing, but that, if he persisted, would eventually come in, replacing the insubstantial fluid he was getting from her now.

The hours passed in dark fits and starts, snatches of
sleep broken by crying that was quieted by suckling again. And that was the end of Friday, the first day.

By noon on the second day the community midwife had been and gone, she still wasn’t up and dressed, her parents were about to return and Dan, who wasn’t working and was free to come any time, had already rung twice.

The third time, she picked up the phone, and said: ‘No. Not now. My parents are coming.’

‘Ohhh . . .’ He sounded heartbroken. ‘But I’ll only stay five minutes. I won’t be in the way, I promise. Maybe I could make it before they turn up.’

She gave in and told him to head on over, but to make it quick. Then her parents were early – Cecily obviously anxious and eager, Robert uneasy and forbearing – and Dan arrived soon afterwards.

He showed up all bright and hopeful and clean-shaven with a ridiculous blue heart-shaped helium balloon and an ostentatious bouquet and a teddy bear that was bigger than William was. He held William fearfully, but with an expression of proprietorial, incredulous pride; and he set about making small talk with Cecily as if it was perfectly normal for him to be hanging out in Tina’s flat, chatting to her mother about the weather and Cornwall and Christmas – as if he belonged there.

Then Cecily said, ‘So have you given any more thought to having William christened?’, directing the question to both of them.

‘It’s no good asking him that,’ Tina told her. ‘He’s a
confirmed atheist. He’s very tolerant, though. He takes a sort of anthropological view of it all.’

‘I’m sure Dan’s quite capable of speaking for himself,’ Cecily said.

‘Thank you, Mrs Fox,’ Dan chipped in.

‘Oh – Cecily. Please.’

‘Thank you, Cecily. Well, I would say that the christening thing is up to Tina. Whatever she wants, I’ll go along with.’

‘That’s a very generous approach.’

‘Mum, please don’t nag. I’ve said I’ll think about it,’ Tina said.

She knew it would upset her mother terribly if she failed to have William baptized, and to her surprise, she could foresee her opposition ebbing away . . . it seemed feasible that some sort of wholly irrational homing instinct would kick in, and eventually she might think, Well, after all, why not? But not yet . . . not just yet.

When she took William back there was a definite tang of Dan’s aftershave clinging to him. It was as if William had been marked. It was a woody scent, not unpleasant, but also not wholly familiar, interfering with the sweet baby smell of William’s head.

It was all too much . . . and William wanted feeding, so she took him downstairs to her bedroom, away from the conversation Dan and Robert had started having, with Robert trying to find out if Dan was interested in rugby or cricket, and Dan tentatively mentioning Bristol Rovers.

She sat on the bed which she had never shared with
Dan, and tried to latch William on. It didn’t work. He jerked away from her nipple as if it revolted him, and started wailing again.

Then Dan barged in without knocking, and she exploded into a histrionic, tear-spouting rage and told him to leave. He reacted as if she’d gone insane. She put William over her shoulder – he was still screaming – bundled Dan towards the front door, opened it and pushed him through and out down the stairs.

Cecily appeared and said, ‘Is everything all right?’

‘It’s not all right! It’ll never be all right!’

And so it seemed. But Cecily took William from her, and half an hour later she tried to feed him again and the magic she’d already come to rely on, her physical connection to her son, was restored.

Then even Robert’s muttered comment – ‘That young chap’s obviously trying to do the right thing, and you’re not making it easy for him’ – didn’t bother her. Why not be magnanimous? She left Dan a message of apology, and put the teddy in the cot, and tied the silly balloon to the rail – not that William could even focus on it, or make out the colour.

That night William fell asleep at the breast and she stirred and he abruptly came adrift. His parted lips were glossy with milk, and in the glow of the nightlight she saw herself eject a fine spray of white droplets that came to rest, glistening, on his cheek.

Wasn’t that the myth of the origin of the Milky Way – a stray spurt of sustenance from the lactating mother of a god?

There was much she hadn’t done for William; he
didn’t have a freshly wallpapered nursery with a frieze of jolly animals and a stain-resistant carpet, or a doting father living under the same roof, or any hope of a wholly devoted, stay-at-home mum. But for now, there was one thing he wanted more than anything else, and she could at least give him that.

On the third day she was calm and heavy and languorous, as if sated. Cecily and Robert came again – how quickly they had settled into a kind of routine! Robert had his newspaper, and Cecily, who had run out of cleaning to do, had brought the bootees she was knitting.

But just as Tina had begun to get used to having them around, it seemed that her parents were beginning to tire, if not of her and William, then of all the to-ing and fro-ing required to see them. Cecily dropped some hints about her needing to get a bed for the spare room, for overnight guests.

‘But that’s going to be William’s room, when he’s old enough to go in on his own,’ Tina objected.

‘Maybe some kind of put-you-up or sofabed,’ Cecily suggested.

‘I can’t see Dad settling for that,’ Tina said.

‘I was thinking more for me. I’d love to come and stay and help out. But Daddy needs his rest, and he’s such a light sleeper. I’m not at all sure how well he’d cope if he was disturbed at night,’ Cecily said with a circumspect little glance in the direction of her husband, who was still stoically reading.

They agreed that since Tina appeared to be coping, Cecily and Robert would not return until the fifth or sixth day.

The fourth day was very cold. The
Post
ran a series of pictures of the hoar frost: glazed white fields and crystallized trees, the sun a delicately tinted disc floating in a sky of fog, exuding, not light, but a pale umbra of colour – lemon and rose diffused by milk.

On the fifth day it snowed, and she couldn’t venture out. She finished Cecily’s chocolate cake, and, at midnight, microwaved the last portion of lasagne.

On the sixth day she was reduced to eating from tins. She decided to leave the chickpeas till last. The snow was still thick on the ground, and she was due to file her column. She had a stab at drafting it, but the sentences refused to follow each other, or make sense.

She was glad to be interrupted by a phone call. It was Lucy, who arranged to come and see her on the tenth day. She sounded excited – something about a job interview. Tina tried to enthuse, but was aware of sounding rusty and lacklustre, as if she was beginning to lose the power of speech.

After she’d chatted to Lucy her head was clearer. She hunched over her computer with William lying on a pillow on her lap, feeding, and kept on typing until she reached the necessary word count.

Lucy must have got in touch with Natalie, because on
the seventh day Natalie came round and refilled Tina’s freezer, and brought her a pile of glossy magazines, more flowers, and another cake.

By the eighth day William’s navel had healed, he was back up to his birth weight, and it was hard to believe she’d ever been nervous about bathing him or changing his nappy.

His eyes were blue. She knew all newborn babies had blue eyes, but she was sure she could see beyond the slight haze in his to a colour that was bright and abiding, more like his father’s than the greeny-grey of her own.

The flowers Cecily had brought her were past their best, but the snow had dwindled enough for delivery services to be resumed, and a bouquet turned up from work. After the traditional congratulations, the message went on:
Oh go on then, put those feet up! But don’t forget there’s a desk here waiting for you!