Astonishing Splashes of Colour (33 page)

Babies are fun, they all say to me. Without babies, you are excluded from a seriously happy world.

I want something cream. The same cream as the wool I bought for Suzy’s baby. It smells warm and comfortable, the only colour that will do. I look at the clothes for newborn babies. I hesitate over the white perfection of the packs of nappies, but I know everybody uses disposable ones.

I pick up a packet and hesitate. No, I think. It’s easier to buy them in Sainsburys or Safeway’s. I already have several dozen at home, piled into my wardrobe, pushed up against the back wall, hidden behind some old blouses.

My eyes finally find the packets of sleepsuits. They skim past the white ones, until they see the cream I am looking for. I pick up a packet and study it. The suits are so tiny, for a new baby, maybe a premature baby, and the cream is subdued and gentle. More human and loving than white.

I run my hand over the packaging, longing to take them out immediately. I almost have the baby in my arms, alive and warm,
in a disposable nappy, its skin pink and wrinkled, its miniature heart beating on its own, pumping the blood round its tiny, perfect body.

A woman stares at me as she sorts through the boys’ clothes. She picks up a jumper, examines it, glances over at me, and then puts it back. What does she want? Why is she looking at me? Does she know something that I don’t? I want to buy the mobile with the teddies in pyjamas—they’re clutching a clock, a hot water bottle, a pillow. But the woman makes me uncomfortable, so I go straight to the checkout with only the sleepsuits. I can always come back another day.

I come out into the Pallasades shopping centre, proud of the Mothercare carrier bag. I’m a normal expectant mother, just like everyone else. I know about babies, about children and prams and cots.

I need to find another exit out of the Pallasades, in case Jake is playing the violin in his usual place. I hover in the entrance of a shop selling accessories and look through the windows. Hair-bands covered in sunflowers, gold and silver tiaras, key rings with dangling pink pigs, earrings of treble clefs, slides with sparkly green frogs on them that change colour when they move. I step into the doorway. What’s the point of buying these things? I come out. Maybe I will never see Emily and Rosie again. I go in. I could always buy some frivolous odds and ends and send them in a parcel as a surprise present. Providing Lesley doesn’t censor all the incoming mail. She could be a disciple of my father. Throwing away anything sent by me. I’d have to disguise my handwriting.

I go in and pick up a few slides and earrings without examining them too carefully. I take them to the checkout. The girl smiles at me. I don’t smile back. I don’t want to look at her in case she can tell I don’t have daughters of the right age.

“Those frogs are lovely, aren’t they?” she says. “I’m going to buy some for the weekend when I go clubbing with my boyfriend.”

She looks about fourteen. Her hair is an unnatural red and it hangs loosely and unevenly to her shoulders. Her face is hidden under a mask of meticulously applied makeup. There is a gap between her top and her trousers and I can see her tummy button, pierced and adorned with a silver ring.

“That’s £24.92,” she says.

I can’t believe they cost so much. It’s only a few slides and earrings. “Fine,” I say, determined not to reveal my alarm.

I have to write out a cheque. Partway through, I realize that I have bought several pairs of earrings for pierced ears, and I don’t think Rosie and Emily have pierced ears. Lesley wouldn’t approve.

I sign the cheque and give it to the girl. She looks at me and I look at her. Does she know that my nieces who are now my cousins don’t have pierced ears?

“Do you have your cheque guarantee card?” she says sweetly.

She knows I don’t really want these things. She knows I am a fraud.

I give her the cheque guarantee card from my purse and watch her writing my number on the back of the cheque. Then I stuff the bag into my Mothercare bag with the sleepsuits and leave the shop hastily, wondering what I’m going to do with them.

I take an escalator down to New Street Station. Huddles of people are watching the times of trains clicking up on the display board. I stand and look too, in case anybody wonders why I’m here. Then I walk to the back doors that take me out past the taxi ranks and to the bus stop where I can wait for a bus home.

The post is lying on the hall floor, so I know James hasn’t been in. I wish he would just come, uninvited. But he won’t. He’s too careful, too considerate. I recognize most of the letters from the writing and their postmarks so I put them aside to open later. Just one looks interesting—handwritten and quite heavy. I look at it, balance it in my hand. A Birmingham postmark, posted yesterday. I have no idea who it’s from, although the handwriting is vaguely familiar, strangely ominous. The telephone rings and I go to answer it, putting the letter in my bag. My hand hovers over the receiver, not sure if I want to pick it up, and the answer machine cuts in.

“Kitty, it’s me. Are you OK?”

Yes, James, I’m fine.

I intended to read today—my mind is moving very fast—but once I sit down, I don’t want to move. I can reach the answer machine though, so I rewind it and listen to the messages.

“Kitty—it’s Caroline. I need your reports back by the end of the week.”

“Hi—it’s Ruth. I can’t seem to find this week’s review from you. Have I lost it?”

“This is Peter Smith from Smith, Horrocks and Smith. Could you phone me, please.”

Who are Smith, Horrocks and Smith? Why is Peter Smith so arrogant that he would expect me to know his name? People should identify themselves if they want me to phone them.

“Kitty—it’s Caroline again. Did you get my message—about your reports?”

“It’s Adrian. I need to talk to you, Kitty. Ring me back.”

“Ruth again. Are you all right, Kitty?”

“Peter Smith here again. Could you ring me urgently?” If it’s that urgent, you can write me a letter.

“Kitty, what’s going on? It’s Ruth. Please send my books back. I have a deadline to meet.”

“Kitty. Are you all right? Come round.” Only James does not need to identify himself.

“Caroline again. Where are you? What’s going on? I need the manuscripts—just send them back if you don’t have time for the reports.”

“Adrian again. Ring me.”

“It’s Caroline. Ring me.”

“Peter Smith. Ring me.”

“Ring me, Kitty—it’s Ruth.”

“Kitty, wake up and come round for a Chinese takeaway. I want some company.”

Oh James. I wish I could. I’m walking down a path that I can’t leave. Even if I turn my head to look at the scenery, I know that my feet will keep on walking firmly in the same direction.

I wake up into complete darkness with an ache in my neck. I sit up and search the darkness urgently, trying to locate the clock. Then I remember that I’m not in bed, but on the sofa. I’ve been dreaming about grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

I stand up and stumble into the bedroom, where I collapse on to the bed. When I close my eyes again, I see the pink van with its wandering question marks.

I can hear Suzy disowning it. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

I know that she’s talking about babies, not the pink van.

“It’s your baby,” I say to her, but she doesn’t hear me. “Look!” I scream at her. “Look at the baby. It’s yours!”

My scream wakes me up and I lie there sweating, though the air around me is cold. I start to shiver. I climb under the duvet and try to pull it round me, but the cold penetrates through invisible channels. I sit up and put on the lamp.

The light swirls round and engulfs me. Babies fill the flat, screaming. I’m coming, I say, getting out of bed. I can smell their rich, creamy smell, the talcum powder, their little bits of sick, the milky, baby smell.

I walk through the flat, putting on my dressing gown, and go out of the front door, leaving the babies behind. At the last minute, I pick up James’s key. I leave my door open and wedge it with a package that the postman delivered yesterday, so the babies can escape while I’m gone. I let myself into James’s flat and creep across his bare, cold, wooden floor, listening to my booming footsteps. There are no babies here—it’s too clean. I push open the door to James’s bedroom. He’s lying on his back with his mouth open, snoring gently.

I roll him on to his side away from me and crawl in beside him, stretching my legs out to mirror his shape, wrapping my body along his contours, moulding myself until I feel that I’m his second skin. He stops snoring. I lie very still, hoping he won’t wake. I want the warmth to flow from his body into mine so that I don’t have to be cold anymore. I want to steal his heat.

When I wake again it is six A.M. I can see the numbers on the clock glowing redly. They play games while the world sleeps, flowing out of their shapes and winding each other into knots, writhing like snakes, challenging like question marks, intertwining on a pink van—

Now I know why I see the van in my dreams. Perhaps I was born in it, lived there with Dinah until something happened to her and I was brought back to Birmingham.

I sit up. Who brought me back to Birmingham? I must have a father somewhere. There must be someone in the world that I can belong to.

James groans and rolls over, pulling the quilt over his head. “It’s cold,” he mutters. I don’t think he knows I’m here.

I tuck the quilt round him and kiss the nape of his neck. Then I wrap myself in my dressing gown again and tiptoe back to my flat, where the door is open and waiting for me.

I dress in jeans and a thick maroon jumper, dithering as I pull on socks and trainers. I don’t know where I’m going exactly, but I
know how important it is to go out. I can’t stay here anymore. My flat holds me in a half-world where I lose my sense of time. I need to go where I can see the sun rise, where there are people talking and walking and doing things, where the world is more real.

I check the baby clothes in my wardrobe. Two dozen nappies, three cream sleepsuits, soft and tiny. I rub my cheek against them and breathe in their baby smell. I have talcum powder, cream for nappy rash, sterilizing equipment, bottles, blankets, rompers in pastel blue with teddies embroidered on them, tiny blue socks that look like sheep, little enough to fit on my thumb. I ache at their smallness. I stand and touch everything and feel their textures. Nearly there. Only a pram and a cot now. Best to leave the big items to last, just in case—

I hesitate at the front door when I see a pile of unopened packages on the hall table. These must be the books they are all getting so excited about on the answer machine. I’m surprised at how many there are. I can’t understand why I haven’t seen them before. Did James put them on the table? But it must have been me because James doesn’t come uninvited. I can’t remember doing it. I pick them all up and carry them back into my lounge.

I sit down with a pen and cross out all the addresses. Underneath, I write with a flourish: “Not known at this address.” I pause for a few seconds to admire my ingenuity. Then I find some carrier bags and carry them all out with me. They’re very heavy. I decide not to close the front door because I feel a sudden desolation at leaving the warmth and familiarity of my flat. I don’t want to shut it away. I want some of it to escape and follow me.

As soon as I see a postbox, I stop to post the manuscripts. It’s not easy because they are so large, but I discover that if you bend each one at a particular moment, it will squeeze past the opening and slide down inside.

“There,” I say with some satisfaction. “That’ll give the postman something to do.”

A girl whizzes past on rollerblades and makes me jump. She glances over her shoulder at me for a second, then looks quickly back to where she’s going. She’s carrying an orange bag over her shoulder, full of newspapers. It’s early for her to be out on her own, I think. I won’t let my child deliver newspapers.

I feel strangely light as I walk away from the postbox, breathing freely now that I’ve disposed of all my burdensome responsibilities.

I run, watching my feet slap down on the pavement, getting pleasure from the sudden burst of energy. I slow down after a while, knowing that I’m much too early for where I want to go, and find a number 11 bus stop. My usual two circuits should fill a few hours. The driver recognizes me. “Another fun-packed day, then?” he says.

I pretend to smile without looking at him directly. There’s something about these totally casual acquaintances that I like. The idea that you know people when you don’t know them at all. The feeling that you can trust someone because he smiles at you. He could be an axe-murderer. Or I could be. One day he’ll see my picture in a newspaper, recognize me and point me out to his wife. “I know her,” he will say. “She used to do the outer circle every now and again. Quite pleasant she was. Didn’t talk much.”

“Well I never,” his wife will say. “Fancy that.”

Harborne, Selly Oak, Bournville, King’s Norton, King’s Heath, Hall Green, Yardley, Erdington, Aston, Perry Barr, Handsworth, Winson Green, Bearwood, Harborne, Selly Oak … I say the names to myself as we go round, like a nursery rhyme, old and loved. Words that have no meaning, yet are reassuringly familiar. We pass the road leading to the Maternity Hospital—between
Harborne and Selly Oak—twice, but I don’t get off. I’m waiting for visiting hours. Two till eight. When I was there, they put the mothers of dead babies on the same floor as mothers of live babies. How could they do that?