With No Crying (12 page)

And in plenty of time she was: though, as it turned out, there were no fresh revelations so far about the stolen baby. At the end of the news, a psychiatrist was brought on to pontificate (Iris’s
word, when she was discussing the programme afterwards with Tim) about these “Crimes of Love” as he dubbed them, giving it as his professional (and not very startling) opinion that girls who steal babies are themselves the victims of a desperate need for love. They see the baby, with its unquestioning, passionate dependence on whoever cares for it, as a love object par excellence with which to fill the aching void, and they deserve pity rather than blame, support and sympathy rather than punishment. Very often (he pointed out) they have suffered some recent trauma of loss or desertion, and have received neither sympathy nor understanding from their families, from whom indeed they may be quite alienated. Compassion, not severity, must be the keynote in dealing with such a victim of her own desperate compulsions, and he appealed to Miss X., whoever she might be, to come forward and give herself up. If she brought the baby back safe and sound, he assured her, she would have nothing to fear; sympathy, understanding, and practical help with her problems would be forthcoming in full measure. And he finished by declaring that it was Society that was to blame, not the unhappy baby-snatcher herself. We are all guilty, because if someone needs love
that
desperately, then clearly it is someone’s duty to love them…

Iris’s lip curled, and she reached towards the knob. Love as a matter of duty was something that she’d seen in action, and she was all too familiar with the place to which it led.

M
ISS
X.
WAS
listening to the talk, too, her radio turned down very low. Unlike Iris, she found nothing to mock at in the psychiatrist’s benign if slightly platitudinous utterances. Almost every word of it struck home to her with poignant accuracy: the desperate hunger for love—the alienation from an uncomprehending family—the recent shattering trauma—why, the man was describing
her,
and so exactly that for a few mad seconds she imagined that he must somehow have tracked her down, and at any moment was going to reveal her identity to all the world.

But he didn’t; and hearing herself described, instead, as “Miss X.”, she felt a rush of absurd relief—even, indeed, a mischievous little flutter of excitement!

“Miss X.!”—What fun! What a wonderful anonymous feeling it gave her! Irresponsible, too! She felt her past self slipping away, and this Miss X. emerging like a snake from its skin into a new and shining world.

she crooned softly to the little creature in her arms, sleeping so peacefully, so trustfully, and with no notion of not belonging there. She looked down at the small, unconscious face, and felt herself drowning in protective love. What should she teach the child to call her, as the months rolled forward bringing it to the verge of speech, to the brink of understanding?

Not “Mummy”, that was for sure. The associations were far too painful.

The baby stirred in her arms, screwing up its face into a thousand wrinkles, and Miss X. looked around for somewhere to
lay it down while she prepared the bottle. She should have improvised a crib of some kind, not to mention a proper stock of essentials, such as disposable nappies and tins of Cow and Gate, before ever embarking on this wild venture—but then, how could she have known?

It had all happened so suddenly: or so it had seemed at the time. It was only now, twenty-four hours later, that she realised that it hadn’t actually been sudden at all, but had been growing, invisibly and imperceptibly, in her empty, broken heart, ever since the blow had first fallen.

The pram had been parked so carelessly, so hurriedly on the hot pavement outside the supermarket, without even the brakes on properly, and in the full glare of the August sun. Miss X. had watched the mother, a blowsy, angry-looking woman of forty or more, yanking her grizzling three-year-old away from the pram, and dragging him, whiny and miserable, into the crowded store. She did not give so much as a backward glance at the pram, though by now its occupant, roused by the sudden cessation of movement, had begun to whimper.

Miss X. waited while the whimpering sharpened, gathered power, and finally escalated to full-blown yelling. Then, after a quick, nervous glance at the store’s entrance to see if the mother was returning, she stepped nearer: one more cautious glance around, and she was leaning down over the pram and peering in under the hood.

A very young baby, still pink with newness, like an opening rose, flailed its tiny arms into the vastness of the universe, and howled its needs into the unknown.

Miss X. straightened up and stepped backwards with guilty haste, though as yet her intention was barely lapping the fringes of her conscious mind. She stood, uneasily, a yard or so away, quite expecting the mother to return at any moment. Surely these passionate yells of rage and despair would have reached
any
mother’s ears, no matter how great the press of crowds and noise in there?

A minute passed … and another. It was all nonsense what that mother had said, later, to the police, about having left the baby
for only a couple of minutes. It was five at least, if not more; she’d almost screamed this fact right into the television screen when she heard the woman lying like that, but had stopped herself just in time.

It was impossible just to stand by, listening to those screams, and doing absolutely nothing. Miss X. could hold back no longer. With a sense of coming home at last, she leaned down, down, into the warm recesses under the hood, and gathered into her arms the quivering, furious little creature.

Instantly, as if she had turned some magic switch, the cries ceased, and were replaced by contented little sucking sounds. The warm, lovely little weight slumped in utter trust against her unfamiliar shoulder as if that was where it had always belonged, and she felt herself drowning in total, unquestioning love, though whether it was hers or the baby’s she could not possibly have told. She was filled, overwhelmed, by a sense of the golden, absolute rightness of what she was doing, and clutching the child close against her chilled, awakening bosom, she whipped round the corner and away.

*

She could not believe it, at first, that no one was running after her; that no angry shouts, no startled eyes, bulging with accusation, were following her:
You’re
not a real mother,
you’re
just a thief and an imposter, a withered branch, a dried-up water-hole!
That’s
not your baby, anyone can see it isn’t! That’s a
real
baby, and you are but barren stock…

But no goggling eyes, no cries of outrage were pursuing her. No one seemed to remark her at all as she walked fast, but not too fast, down the almost empty side-street … round the corner at the bottom … and into an even emptier one, drowsy with the long afternoon’s heat. No heads leaned out of windows as she passed, no faces peered round the lace curtains. A cat licked itself on a dusty, baking doorstep; an old woman watered her geraniums; a young coloured boy, carrying a ladder, passed, whistling, on the other side of the road.

“Nah, leave it, man, leave it!” someone admonished wearily from inside one of the upstairs rooms; and gradually, bit by bit, it
was borne in upon Miss X. that no one was taking any notice of her at all: that the world was still simply going about its business, just as if nothing had happened.

By the time she reached the park she was really tired, glad to sit down in the coolness under one of the great trees. Still no one was staring at her, and if they glanced in her direction at all, it was only with that mild, benevolent interest that the sight of a baby in arms sometimes arouses in women who have had children of their own, especially those who are now past having any more.

“How old is the little dear?” asked the comfortable, bespectacled Gran who was sitting on the bench next to her; and for a moment, Miss X. felt a horrid little twinge of alarm. How old
was
the baby? Very young, almost new-born, she’d guessed; but suppose she’d guessed wrong? Suppose her companion, suddenly and terrifyingly knowledgeable (on the basis, perhaps, of thirteen children of her own and countless nephews, nieces, grandchildren)—suppose she were to peer closer into the baby’s face, and then, puzzled and suspicious, turn upon Miss X. and say…

But she didn’t. On the contrary, she didn’t even seem to notice that her question hadn’t been answered:

“Aah!” she said, laying down her knitting to smile and cluck her tongue at the sleeping infant. “Aah, they’re lovely at this age, aren’t they, dear? Pity they have to grow up!”—and then, clucking some more and beaming even closer into the baby’s face, she continued, innocently as ever:

“Lovely, isn’t he?—Or is it a little girl?”

And it was only now, for the very first time, that it dawned on Miss X. that she hadn’t the faintest idea. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that her prize could be other than female, simply because this was what she so passionately wanted it to be. But of course you couldn’t really tell just by their faces, not at this age.

Just wait a moment, and I’ll have a look—Miss X. had to suppress a hysterical giggle as the only straightforward and honest answer flashed through her mind. Then, pulling herself together, she took the plunge.

“A little girl,” she said boldly, and felt a surge of fear at thus tempting Providence; and then a surge of wild longing to go home
straight away, undress the child, and find out for sure…

Home
?
She must be out of her mind! Bidding the old lady a hasty goodbye, she heaved herself to her feet, and clutching the unprotesting little bundle close to her, she hurried across the grass until she reached the shelter of a little clump of bushes alongside the Ladies. There, half-hidden in the long grass, she sat down with the baby in her lap and began, with trembling fingers, to pick her way through the plethora of lower garments—poor little thing, far too many layers of wool and nylon for a day like this!—until she reached at last the soaked, steaming nappy—an old-fashioned towelling one, fastened with two large safety pins, savage and gigantic alongside the tiny thighs.

One pin… Two pins…

A
girl
!
So she
had
been right! Although the chances of being right had been every bit as good as the chances of being wrong, it seemed to Miss X. like a sign from Heaven, a direct message from God himself that this truly
was
her baby. By guessing right, she had actually made it her own! Male and female created he them, but she, Miss X., had managed at will to create female only, simply by saying so! “A little girl,” she had told the old woman, boldly and uncompromisingly, thus bringing into being this tiny, pink female crease between the tirelessly pedalling thighs.

“Let it be a girl!” she had commanded; and it
was
a girl!

Strange that she, who hadn’t thought about religion in years, and had certainly never believed in miracles, should suddenly find herself in possession of such powers!

T
HE FORTY-EIGHT
hours were over, and Miranda was due back at the Squat that very evening.

Everything was ready. The pink nylon net had been bought, and gathered into a pretty frill round the borrowed crib with its second-hand sheets and blankets, lovingly washed and ironed. A patchwork quilt, all pinks and mauves and tiny white flowers, had been donated by the sister-in-law of one of the girls in Alison’s office, and was now draped in readiness over the end of the crib, the washed-out colours and slightly frayed seams blurred into an allover radiance by the evening sun. All the members of the Squat—even Merve—were gathered round, as if at some shrine, awed and expectant, while out in the kitchen the celebration dinner—one of Iris’s special goulashes, with garlic and red peppers—was gently simmering.

“Just imagine—Baby Caroline will be actually
here
—actually
this
evening
!” murmured Alison, gazing wonderingly into the waiting crib. “Fancy—her little golden head against the white—”

“It won’t be golden,” Iris was beginning, “New born babies are always …” but Alison seemed not to have heard. “… Against the white pillowcase,” she continued, as if there had been no interruption. “I’m glad it was the white ones your cousin sent us in the end, Belinda, and not the yellow. For a very fair baby, yellow would be awful…”

“And unlucky, too,” put in Belinda. “Yellow’s one of the unlucky colours. Not as bad as green, of course, but not too good… I warned her at the time—my cousin—not to buy them, but she wouldn’t listen, and sure enough Jonathan got this awful rash when he was only five weeks old … all over his tummy and bottom, and it must have been horribly itchy, because he cried
and cried, they got no sleep for the best part of a week. She couldn’t say I hadn’t warned her. It’s the middle band of the spectrum, you see: the red end’s all right, and the blue end’s all right, but in the middle—
No,
Tim, it’s
not
nonsense! Even the scientists are beginning to accept the idea that colours can affect things. They did this experiment with school classrooms—I was reading about it only recently—with some of the classrooms painted blue—I think it was—and the others orange: and they found that the children in the orange classrooms…”

“Shush!” Alison’s voice was shrill and urgent—“Listen—isn’t that a taxi drawing up outside?”—and they all rushed to the window.

But it wasn’t. They drew back their craning necks and returned to waiting stations. A little querulous now, from the mounting tension, they resumed the conversation from where it broke off. Somebody pointed out that if there were indeed some parts of the spectrum that were unluckier than others, then white must be the unluckiest of all, since in it were contained
all
the colours.

Naturally, Belinda wasn’t going to give in that easily. After barely a moment’s hesitation, she managed to recall yet another article she’d read, in The Scientific American, or Amazing Predictions, or somewhere, to the effect that…

Alison, almost in tears, struggled to shut them all up and restore the mood of almost religious ecstasy with which the vigil had begun.

“Oh,
please
don’t let’s be having a stupid fight about nothing just when Miranda’s coming home!” she wailed. “Just imagine—for Baby Caroline—if the first human words she hears are a silly argument about spectrums—Oh,
all
right,
‘spectra’ if you like!—That’s just exactly the sort of thing I mean! Look, let’s drop all this, and talk about the baby, shall we?”—here she glared ferociously round the little circle, daring any of them to challenge this switch to holier ground—“Oh, I do so wonder that she’ll be
like,
don’t you. Of course, we know she’s fair, and her blue eyes and everything: but I mean what she’s actually
like
?
… You know…?”

*

Iris listened to the idle, baseless speculations that were being tossed to and fro; and now and then allowed a tiny pitying smile to curl her lips, when none of them were looking.

For she, and she alone, actually
knew
what the small face would be like which was so soon to nestle on that pillow: for had she not seen photographs of it, by the dozen, in every single newspaper, ever since yesterday morning?

And she alone, likewise, knew what was going to be wrong with the child.

Because, of course, the baby which Miranda, all starry-eyed and maternal, was going to lay reverently in that crib, was not going to be a new-born baby at all, but one turned three weeks old.

With secret, growing impatience, which was like a sort of greed, Iris savoured the coming scenario.

Alison, Belinda and Merve would, of course, be taken in completely. “Gosh, isn’t she
big
!” one of them might exclaim admiringly: but that sly little cow had already forestalled that line of thinking by announcing that the baby had weighed nine-and-a-half pounds at birth—quite unnecessary, actually, since a new baby actually
loses
weight for its first few days, and by three weeks may have done little more than catch up to its original weight. But Miranda wouldn’t know this.

Tim would, though. After all those years of medical training, let alone having just recently got through his midwifery course with flying colours, he could hardly fail to be familiar with so basic a fact. He would be familiar, too, with the differences that
do
exist between a new-born baby and one that is three weeks old. If not at first glance, then certainly the moment he picked it up, he would know. He would recognise at once that indefinable firmness of texture, that solidity of contour, which three weeks’ exposure to the great outside world gives to the limp, tacky body of the new-born. He would feel the already purposeful thrust of the maturing muscles in the tiny, and yet no longer stick-like, limbs; he would see the eyes, wide open, and already trying to focus; and he would
know.
He could not help knowing.

And if, somehow, he
did
fail to recognise these signs, then Iris
would lose no time in enlightening him. And this alternative scenario, as it took shape in her mind, was in some ways even more delicious than the first.

“Goodness, fancy her eyes being so wide open, as if she was really
looking
at you!” Iris envisaged herself saying innocently: and, “Good heavens, how
strong
she is! Just feel, Tim!—did you ever feel muscles like that on a new-born baby? …” “And her skin so rosy and firm … no redness … no wrinkles…” On and on she would pile the apparently innocent compliments, from the shape of the child’s head—“Fancy, no moulding!”—to the strength of its cry, and the confident vigour of its search for breast or bottle, its general air, in short, of having already learned the tricks of its trade. She pictured the bewilderment on Tim’s face … the slow dawning of suspicion … and then, finally, the utter shock as the truth hit him: the horror, dismay and revulsion…

Iris felt the black jealousy of the last few weeks subsiding. The celebration bottle of wine Tim had brought in winked in the sunset light; and Iris almost winked back.

She could hardly wait for it all to begin.

*

Trying to get the baby dressed that afternoon, Miss X. had found herself a bag of nerves, terrified of every creaking board, even of every passing footstep in the street.

Until now, she had been sustained by a sort of euphoria, compounded of delight in her new little companion, and triumph at having got away with it: of having outwitted the lot of them! A dozen times a day, turned down as low as a whisper, she would listen to the news of her crime, gloating over every false trail, every misleading clue that the police were so painstakingly investigating.

Sometimes, seething with secret mischief, she felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to tease them a little; to play Hunt the Thimble with them, as at children’s parties long ago: “Colder… colder … bit warmer now… Ah, colder again! …
ice
-cold …
free-eezing
!”—laughing behind her hand as they stumbled this way and that in accordance with her directions, sometimes veering
in the right direction, more often in the wrong… Wrong … wrong … wronger…!

It was an impulse that must be resisted, of course. Probably most successful criminals are assailed by it at times—“Ha-ha! Sold again!
This
is how I did it, you silly goons…!”—but this way disaster lies. Miss X., like so many another malefactor, must keep her cleverness to herself.

And she
had
been clever; there could be no doubt about that. To have thought of this hiding place, so obvious, and yet so cunningly camouflaged as to put absolutely
everyone
off the scent—this had been a stroke of genius. In contemplating her own ingenuity, and silently congratulating herself upon it, Miss X. felt her panic subsiding, and she applied herself once more to getting the baby into its clean clothes. She yearned to have something prettier than these old things to dress the little girl in, but of course it was impossible. It would be madness to be caught shopping for baby clothes at just this juncture; probably every mother-and-baby outfitters in London had been alerted by now, and would be keeping an eye open for new and suspicious customers.

Never mind. It wasn’t going to be for long, and meanwhile these second-hand oddments were better than nothing: better, certainly, than the thick, wintry woollies that the child’s former mother had put on her. Miss X. had lost no time in getting rid of
those,
and not only because they could prove incriminating. She wanted also to get rid of every trace of the child’s former life and thus make it totally hers. Above all, she intended to get rid of the ridiculous Christian name it had been burdened with—“Dawn”, of all things—did you ever hear of anything so affected and soppy? And even worse, “My Dawnie”, as the woman was wont to say when interviewed by the Press.

Leaning close, Miss X. tried to whisper to the baby its new name, the lovely old family name she’d had in mind from the very beginning, or even before: but, as always when she came to pronounce the syllables, memory surged back, and she found herself choked with tears.

But this was no time for sentiment: there was a lot still to be
done. When the last of the waving little pink limbs had been inserted into the faded cotton romper suit several sizes too large, Miss X. laid the child in the crib she had by now improvised out of a cardboard box, and hurried to prepare a bottle—by no means an easy task in this neglected and somewhat unhygienic place, where nothing seemed to work, and water ran brown from the taps. Even getting the milk to the right temperature was quite a problem, let alone sterilizing bottle and teat; and all the time there was the fear that the baby might start crying before she was ready. This had been the biggest hazard all along, and though Miss X. had worked out an ingenious way of tackling it, it wasn’t really a satisfactory way, nor particularly pleasant for the baby. Each time, Miss X. hated doing it, and could only hope that the procedure wouldn’t end up giving the child a complex, or something.

Still, it wasn’t going to be for long. Soon, all these precautions would be a thing of the past.

*

Seven o’clock … eight o’clock … and still Miranda hadn’t returned to the Squat. The sun had long gone off the pink-frilled crib, leaving it pallid and tatty-looking. The goulash was slowly spoiling in the oven, and the reception committee was growing anxious and restive.

“I
told
you one of us should have gone and fetched her,” Tim grumbled; and Iris reminded him, rather sharply, that Miranda had particularly requested that this should not be done, ringing up the next-door people specially with a message to this effect.

“Don’t you remember, I told you, she said she’d been moved to an annexe, or something, she wasn’t sure exactly where …?”

“You could have found out,” Tim retorted. “It’s not all that difficult to…” But before Iris had time to retaliate, a little squeal from Alison brought them all to their feet.

“A car…! I can hear it slowing down!” she shrieked; and once again there was a stampede to the window—only to find that the car was indeed slowing down, but only preparatory to turning the corner at the end of the road.

“Let’s eat,” proposed Merve, sniffing hungrily at the aroma
of soon-to-be-ruined goulash; and while the party were still debating this heartless suggestion—more and more favourably as the minutes passed—a slight noise from outside brought the chatter to an abrupt halt.

There in the doorway stood Miranda, slim, white-faced, and quite alone.

“She’s dead. Baby Caroline is dead,” she announced, calmly and firmly; then flung herself onto the sofa, sobbing as if her grief would never end.