One for My Baby (25 page)

twenty-nine

I catch the last train out to Essex.

My carriage is full of young men who dress in suits and young women who dress like Jackie Day. It is like the rush hour for overdressed drunks. Everyone is loud and happy. There’s no trouble. The carriage smells of kebabs, lager and Calvin Klein.

Near midnight the train slowly rattles out of the great metal barn of Liverpool Street Station. It is difficult to know where the city ends and where the suburbs begin, where the underground stations give way to small towns, what is London and what is Essex.

Drifting by in the darkness I can see the rotting hulks of sixties tower blocks, endless railway yards, forecourts crammed with second-hand cars, and then a track for dog racing, pubs, drive-through burger bars, Chinese and Indian restaurants, more pubs, ratty strings of shops, estates that seem to go on and on for ever. A world of cars, council houses and small pleasures. Essex looks like London with the big money gone.

The stops clatter by – Stratford, Ilford, Seven Kings, Chadwell Heath, Romford, Harold Wood, Billericay. The urban sprawl stretches deep into the night, the city never seems to come to an end. And then, after almost an hour, with most of the overdressed drunks sleeping or gone, it suddenly does.

The city’s overspill is abruptly replaced by flat green fields, black and silent beyond the lights of railway and road, and the next stop is Bansted. Out where the city finally starts trying to pass itself off as the countryside.

Bansted. Their home town.

The minicab drives slowly down a narrow street of pebble-dash semi-detached houses. Some of the houses have pretty little gardens, full of terracotta pots and flower beds. Others have their front lawns brutally bricked over, a car or a van parked where the grass should be. Almost as if you have to choose between the flowers or the cars. And maybe you do.

Jackie’s house has grass out front, but that’s all. No border for flowers, no space for plants. Just a plain grass lawn. I pay the minicab driver and walk up the drive she shares with her next-door neighbours. The house is in darkness. I ring the bell.

She answers the door in – what’s it called? the silky Japanese robe? – a kimono. And I smile to myself because that is just so typical of Jackie. She couldn’t have an ordinary dressing gown like everyone else. It has to be a kimono.

“What happened to you?” she says.

“You’re never knowingly underdressed, are you?”

“Have you been beaten up?”

My face. She is looking at my face. I touch it and feel the dried flakes of blood by the side of my swollen mouth. I shrug bravely and she lets me into the house, turning on a few lights, offering me tea or coffee. The house is small and tidy, nothing fancy, with little red flowers on the wallpaper.

There’s a photo by the door of Plum as a little girl, smiling in the sunshine of what looks like the English seaside. A lovely little kid. Not overweight, not hiding behind her fringe, not sad at all. What happened?

I look at Jackie. This is the first time I have seen her without make-up. Liberated from all the usual war paint, her face is quite shockingly pretty. We go into the living room. There’s a huge TV set, a terrible orange carpet, more pictures of Plum, some of them with Jackie, young and laughing, and a lot of the kind of mementos that my nan loves – Celtic crosses, Spanish bulls, Mickey Mouse waving a white-gloved paw, a souvenir from Disneyworld.

“What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to say – it’s great.”

“Are you drunk? You’re drunk, aren’t you? I can smell it on you.”

Plum’s voice from the top of the stairs. “Mum, who is it?”

“Go back to sleep,” Jackie calls up to her.

“I think it’s great that you want to go to college,” I tell her. “I mean it. Get an education. Change your world. I admire your determination. I really do. I wish I could change my world. My world is just about ready for a change.”

“That’s it?”

“What?”

“That’s what you want to tell me?”

“And – I like you.”

She laughs, shakes her head, pulls the kimono a little tighter.

“Oh, you like me, do you?”

I collapse on the sofa. The leather creaks with protest beneath me. I suddenly feel very tired.

“Yes.”

I realise that it’s true. I like her a lot. The way she is bringing up her daughter alone, the way she works hard at her crappy job, doing things for all the phoneys in Cork Street and Churchill’s that they can’t do themselves, dreaming of going back to college. No, she’s not dreaming. She is making it happen. Cleaning floors and toilets in Cork Street and then writing essays about
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
in her spare time. It’s impressive. She has more fight in her than anyone I know. I admire her. The way I haven’t admired anyone since Rose.

So I go to put my arms around her, feeling a great undigested chunk of affection mixed with all that Tsingtao welling up inside me. But she pushes me away.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she says, taking a step backwards, tightening the kimono a bit more. “I don’t think that would be the greatest idea in the world. Jesus Christ. Do you have to go to bed with all your students? Can’t you just – I don’t know –
teach
them or something?”

“Jackie, I didn’t mean –”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve. I mean it. This is not funny. What made you think you could come here and have sex with me?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “The way you dress?”

“I should give you a slap. You bloody bastard. You make me so angry.”

“I don’t want you to be angry with me. I just wanted to see you. I’m sorry. I really am. I’ll go.”

“Where? You’re not in Islington now. You think you can just step into the street and flag down a black cab? There are no taxis, no trains. Not at this time. You’re in the sticks now, mate.” She shakes her head, the anger subsiding in the face of my total ignorance. “Don’t you know anything at all?”

So she lets me sleep on her sofa. She says the first train to London isn’t until the morning, and although she thinks I deserve to be curled up in the photo booth on Bansted station, she is going to take pity on me.

She goes upstairs and I hear voices. Two women. No – a woman and a girl. Then Jackie comes back down with a pillow and a single duvet. She throws them at me, still shaking her head, but smiling at the same time, as though, now she comes to think about it for five minutes, I am funny-pathetic more than offensive-pathetic. She leaves me to it, still adjusting her kimono.

I make up my little bed on the leather sofa, take off my trousers and climb under the duvet. The only sound I can hear is Jackie cleaning her teeth in the bathroom. It is very quiet out here, there’s none of the city’s constant background noise of sirens, faraway voices and the roaring traffic’s boom.

I find myself nodding off, only waking up with a start when I feel someone looking down at me.

It’s Plum in her stripy pyjamas.

“Please don’t hurt her,” she says.

Then she is gone.

In the morning I wake up when I hear the front door close. It’s still dark, but there’s the sound of a bicycle being wheeled down the little drive. I push back the duvet and go to the window. And there’s Plum, wrapped up inside one of those big puffer jackets, a woollen hat jammed down on her head, an orange bag slung around her shoulders, pushing her bike. She sees me, grins and waves. I watch her cycle off down the silent street.

“She’s got a paper round.” Jackie is in the doorway, already dressed. “I hope she didn’t wake you.”

“A paper round? You Day girls work really hard, don’t you?”

“We have to,” she says, and her smile makes her words softer than they really are. “There’s nobody else to do it, is there? Want a cup of coffee?”

I put on my trousers and follow her into the kitchen. My mouth feels dry and sour. Now that the night and the Tsingtao have gone, I am embarrassed to be here.

“How do you feel?” she asks me. “As bad as you look? Surely not quite as bad as that?”

“Sorry. It was a dumb idea to come here. But I didn’t come all the way out here just to sleep with you. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re a smooth talker, aren’t you?”

“I just felt like talking to someone. Something happened. Something bad.”

She hands me a cup of coffee. “Want to talk about it now?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Want to give me a clue?”

“It was a girl. At my college.”

“Ah, one of your students. Of course.”

“She had an abortion.”

Then she is not laughing any more. “That must have been a hard thing to go through.”

“It was the worst. The worst thing.”

“How old is she?”

“Not very old. Early twenties.”

“I was seventeen. When I fell with Plum.” Fell with. Sometimes she uses the expressions of my mother and my grandmother. “Not that I thought about an abortion.”

“You didn’t even think about it?”

“I’m a Catholic. I believe that all life is sacred.”

“That’s a good thing to believe. If you’re going to believe in anything.”

“But having a baby changed my life. I left school. Didn’t go to university. Didn’t get my degree. Couldn’t get a good job. Stayed in Bansted. Not that Bansted is such a bad place.”

“You kept your baby. And it – she – messed up everything.”

She shakes her head. “No, it didn’t. Not really. It just put things on hold for a while. I’m going back to college, aren’t I? Thanks to you.”

“You never regretted it? Having the baby?”

“I can’t imagine a world without my girl in it.”

“She’s lucky to have a mum like you.”

“And she’s unlucky to have a dad like her dad. So I guess it all evens out in the end.”

“What’s wrong with her dad?”

“Jamie? There’s not a lot wrong with him when he’s sober. When he’s had a few, things happen. Usually to me. But he started on Plum, so we left. Two years ago. Got this place. I didn’t recognise him by then.”

“You must have liked him once.”

“You kidding? I was nuts about him. My Jamie. Tall, dark, built like a brick house. He was a good little footballer. Midfield. A good engine, as they say. Very fit. Had a chance of turning professional. Trials with West Ham. Then he did his knee in. The left one. So now he works as a security guard. And gets pissed. And knocks around his new partner. But not me. Not any more. And not my daughter.”

“Why did you leave it for so long? I don’t mean leaving your husband, leaving Jamie. The education thing. Why wait? If it was so important to you, why didn’t you do it years ago?”

“Jamie didn’t want me to. I think he was a bit jealous. He didn’t want my dream to come true when his dream didn’t. Men are very competitive, aren’t they? Another word for simple. My ex-husband wants the world to have a bad knee.”

“Well, we’ll get you through your exam.” I raise my coffee cup in salute. “And I hope it makes you happy.”

She raises her own cup. “You think it won’t. You think I’m expecting some student paradise that doesn’t really exist. Beautiful young people sitting around talking about
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
. And you don’t think it’s like that. You think it’s all a waste of time. Qualifications. Education. Getting my exams, as my old mum would have said. But it wasn’t a waste of time for Rose, was it?”

“Rose?”

“She came from out here, didn’t she?”

“Not far away.”

“If she hadn’t got an education, you would never have met her. If she hadn’t gone to university and become a lawyer and gone to Hong Kong, you would never have known her. If she had had a baby at eighteen with someone else – don’t look at me like that – then what would your life have been like?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without knowing her.”

“You were mad about her, weren’t you?”

“I still am. But what can you do? I loved and lost. I’ve had my turn.”

“Your turn?”

“My turn at – come on, you know. Love. Romance. Relationships. All that stuff.”

She shakes her head. “Well, I don’t think I’ve had my turn. Not after Jamie. Are you kidding? I reckon I deserve a second turn after that lot. I reckon everyone deserves a second go at being happy. Even you, Alfie. You should have a little more faith.”

“A little more faith?”

“That’s right. A little more faith. Don’t be like my ex-husband. Don’t sit around wishing that everyone had a bad knee.”

“I just think you get one chance – one real chance – then it’s gone forever. I don’t think that you can go around starting over again and again. That’s not the real thing, is it? How can it be the real thing if it comes along every few years or so? That makes a mockery of the real thing.”

“Maybe. But come on. What else are you going to do with the rest of your life? You don’t have to stick with your students just because you know they’re going home one day. You don’t have to stick with young women who can’t really hurt you.”