Please Don't Stop The Music (2 page)

‘
She doesn’t actually
kick
them does
she?’

‘
Well, no,’ Rosie looked down at Harry’s
sleeping head and dropped a soft kiss on it. ‘But she looks as
though she would if no-one was watching. Anyway, my point is … oh
sod it, Jem, what
is
my point? I thought my memory would improve after Harry was
born. D’you know I’m beginning to think it wasn’t the placenta that
came out after him, it was my brain?’

‘
Well thanks for
that
image. Your point, I think, was
that Saskia isn’t exactly short of a few quid.’

‘
Yes. Yes, that was it. And she ate our last
HobNob? Hang on a minute, nursing mother here, aren’t I entitled
to
any
privileges? Look, I’m going to put Harry in his cot for a
sleep and get on and do some cards. I’ve got a few orders to fill
before next week so I’d better make a start now while it’s
quiet.’

‘
Are
you sure you wouldn’t rather go to bed for a bit?’ Harry, bless his
little babygros, wasn’t exactly the calm, relaxed baby Rosie had
somehow been led to believe she’d have, despite all the whale-song
CDs and the hours of pregnancy-yoga, during which she’d looked more
and more like an egg on a stick. Since his arrival she’d acquired
shadows under her eyes and a pale, stretched look as though she was
co-existing in several universes at once.

‘
Nah, I’d better get on. I’ll catch a snooze
later.’

‘
Have you thought any more about … maybe …’ It sounded
incoherent but Rosie knew what I meant.

‘
I can bring Harry up on my
own
perfectly well, just
as long as Saskia doesn’t decide she wants to turn him into a
baby-skin coat or sausages or something.’

Harry’s father was something Rosie never
talked about. She’d not had a boyfriend for at least a year, or,
obviously she
had
, for the duration of copulation if nothing else, but she
refused to say anything about him.
My
money was on Jason, but then my
money was on Jason for everything from funding terrorism to
dropping litter. Despite this, I harboured a kind of hope that he
was the father. He was well-off, good-looking and wouldn’t
necessarily mean Harry was doomed to being several nails short of a
shelf unit; Rosie was quite bright enough to make up that
particular deficiency.

‘
Well, if you’re sure … I’d better get back to the marketing
drawing board. Again. “Cosmopolitan” huh! I dread to think what
she’s going to turn that lovely little shop into! Should have seen
it coming, I guess, she’s always wanted to be El Supremo of York
City Centre.’

‘
Wouldn’t she have to be black?’

I
stared at Rosie for a moment then my synapses managed to switch to
new-mother mode of thinking. ‘That’s the Supremes, dear. Look, I’m
going into York, trolling round the jewellery shops for another
outlet. Do you need anything?’

‘
New
body? One where all the bits that are meant to go in, go in and
don’t flap around in the breeze?’

‘
I’ll buy you some big pants.’

Rosie looked down at herself. ‘Can you get them
neck-to-ankle?’

‘
You’re not that bad. Anyway, you had a ten-pound baby less
than two months ago, it’ll take time for it all to go back to where
it was.’

‘
Yeah.’ Rosie sounded tired and I suddenly had a
brilliant idea.

‘
How
about if I take Harry with me?’

She
came over all protective, wrapping her body over Harry’s slumbering
form. ‘Why?’

‘
Distraction. I mean, last time I went round with my stuff,
everyone was so dismissive. If I’ve got a pram and a baby, people
might at least feel sorry for me.’

‘
So
you want my baby just so you can have a crack at the pity vote?
Jemima, that is very immoral.’

‘
You could get on with your cards.
And
probably fit in a
snooze.’

I
watched her eyelids droop as though even the promise of sleep was
enough. ‘All right. There’s a couple of bottles of expressed milk
in the fridge, in case he wakes up.’

‘
But
you just stuffed him.’

Rosie gave me a Look, which expressed the gulf between
mothers and non-mothers. ‘Just in Case. That’s my
motto.’

‘
I
thought your motto was Biscuits, Bustiers and Orlando
Bloom?’

‘
Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘Then I had a baby.’

Chapter Two

York
has numerous streets and alleyways which fold in upon themselves to
fill a small area with an almost limitless number of retail
opportunities, like a kind of fractal purchasing reality. However,
I soon discovered (a) that most of the shops, despite looking
exclusive and designer from the outside, actually stocked
depressing shades of the same eco-friendly woodwork and
mass-produced earrings and (b) that you can’t push a pram over
cobbles. Cobblestones might be picturesque but they take a toll on
childhood constitutions, and Harry looked a bit wan as his head
rolled around on the mattress for the third or fourth time. He was
beginning to grouse tetchily. I peered down at his matinée-jacketed
form. He was wearing a pale crocheted effort over a green babygro
that Rosie liked because she thought it made him look cute; I
actually thought it made him look like a string bag of sprouts but,
hey, he’s not my baby.

‘
One
more, Harry. Promise. Then we can go home.’

I
lied, of course, because he was eight weeks old and couldn’t hold
it against me. Much good it did me. I might just as well have quit
after the ‘one more’, no-one was keen and most of the shops were so
narrow that I had to push in and back out, risking taking most of
the stock with me. Leaning over the pram, spreading my portfolio
over Harry’s head, didn’t really give the opportunities for selling
either. The answer was always, ‘Sorry, they’re beautiful, but a bit
expensive,’ until eventually I had tried every jewellery stockist
in the central York area.

Harry had begun to complain seriously now.
I shushed him by pushing the pram energetically to and fro, making
his rabbit mobile oscillate dangerously, while I perched on the
edge of the fountains outside the art gallery and wondered what to
do. I mean this was
York
! City of horse-drawn carriage
rides and medieval stone work. If I couldn’t sell hand-crafted belt
buckles here then I might as well go back to France. Where I hadn’t
exactly taken the Continent by storm either, but at least my
failures had had an edge of Gallic glamour. Or Italy; I could go to
Italy again, where I’d discovered the population possessed a whole
range of elegantly dismissive shrugs when faced with a belt buckle
in the shape of the Venetian Bridge of Sighs. If the jewellery
didn’t start selling I could write a book, ‘How to tell you’re
being given the brush-off in ten European languages’ – hang on a
minute. Wasn’t that another little alleyway there, between those
two sandwich shops?

Sure
enough, the sun was shining down a passage I hadn’t noticed
previously where the walls of the two shops didn’t quite touch.
Dragging the grumpy Harry, although there was barely room for the
pram to pass without scoring a line in the brickwork, I emerged
into a small cobbled yard behind the shopping street. It contained
two kiosk-sized constructions, one of which was closed and boarded
but the other had a window display of technicolour music posters
and T shirts with various tour dates emblazoned across. It also
contained, coiled in one corner like a sleeping snake, a big
leather belt. Belts need buckles, don’t they?

I
jostled the door open with my shoulder and backed the pram in,
realising as I did so that there wasn’t room for both Harry and me
to fit inside the shop at the same time. In a spirit of compromise
(and also because if I’d left him outside Rosie would have found
out somehow and killed me), I left the front half of the pram
hanging over the step. It lacked a certain dignity for a sales call
but I reckoned I’d shot my bolt on the dignity thing, what with the
fluffy bunny hanging toy and the Thomas the Tank Engine changing
bag.

As
the door opened a broken bell let out a buzzing sound which I could
feel in my teeth. Beyond the immediate doorway the shop widened,
giving room for the racks of music, the guitars hanging on the
walls and the stand displaying posters of the latest bands. Between
the Fenders the walls were coated with neon flyers for gigs by a DJ
called Zafe. At the back of the shop there was a counter with a
cash register, but no-one standing behind it. It was dark and there
was a smell of polish and old paper, the kind of librarianish smell
that asks you to be quiet and not eat anything which might
stain.

‘
Hello?’

My
voice made Harry step up the whingeing a notch. I hoped he wasn’t
hungry or wet. I had to admit to a slight squeamishness about both
ends of Harry and their products.

‘
Anyone in?’

Harry upped the ante on the grouching stakes and he’d gone a
bit pink, too. Maybe he was too hot? Did babies get too hot? I knew
they had to be protected against getting chilled, but Rosie hadn’t
mentioned the heat. Cautiously I reached over and tweaked the
blanket further down his little green body. ‘Are you all right?’ As
I drew the blanket lower a tell-tale yeasty smell floated out of
the pram and I could see the stains spreading all the way up the
back and sides of his sleepsuit. ‘Oh, Harry …’

Harry, very male all of a sudden, looked rather proud of
himself. Great. Food I could do, nappies I could do. A complete
change of clothes and pram sheet – nope, bit lacking in the total
clean laundry department.

‘
Can
I help you?’

The
voice came from the dark recess at the back of the shop. Male.
Great.

‘
I …
no, sorry, it’s just, he’s got a bit …’

‘
Hold on.’ There were footsteps, a slammed
door and a pause, during which Harry kicked his legs like a trainee
can-can dancer and gave me a full view of just how bad things were.
Not to be too graphic, it was even in his
hair
. Then there was someone in
front of me in the doorway, prevented from coming in by Harry and
his malodorous transport. ‘Hi. That’s better, now I can see you.
Did you come for the guitar?’

‘
Guitar?’

‘
That’ll be a no then. Look, why don’t you shove the pram
outside, bring the baby in with you and we’ll find out what I can
do for you, yes?’ The pram was being tugged from the outside and I
had no choice but to follow it into the yard and confront the man
who was pulling it.

To
call his appearance weird was to leave myself short of adjectives
to describe his clothes, but a few moments with a thesaurus opened
to ‘urgh’ would rectify that. He was tall and skinny and wearing a
shirt made for a much larger man, or at least one with shoulders.
His dark hair straggled at various unkempt lengths outlining how
thin his face was, and he had on multicoloured trousers which clung
so tightly to his legs that I hoped they were lycra. Otherwise he
was doomed to a day standing up. Around his desperately bony hips
was wound an enormous belt which probably doubled his bodyweight
and ended in a silver buckle with a death’s head motif. Overall he
looked like a man who’d been dressed from the rag-bag and then run
over by a lawn mower.

I
couldn’t take my eyes off the belt buckle. Eventually the man
coughed to attract my attention. ‘I don’t usually like to stop
women staring at my groin, but … you’re a bit intense, I’m starting
to worry.’

‘
Oh,
I’m sorry.’

‘
Don’t be. I’d have shoved a pair of socks down if I’d known,
to give you something to look at. Now, shall we go inside? This
young chap looks as though he could do with some attention.’ The
man leaned forward as though to lift Harry out of the pram, but I
leaped across to forestall him.

‘
No!’

The
man jumped back, hands held up. He had a curiously concentrated
expression as though my face was the most important thing he’d seen
all day. ‘Hey, it’s all right, I’m not going to molest him or
anything.’

‘
No,
it’s just that he’s absolutely filthy.’

‘
Filthy? Why, what’s he been doing, working on a building
site?’ He shook flopping locks from big brown eyes and stared down
at Harry. ‘You’re a very forward little guy, aren’t
you?’

‘
I
meant, like, pooey,’ I said, but he didn’t seem to be listening,
staring at the baby again with that concentrated look. The lines on
his face and the slight tightness of his mouth which was just
visible amid some fairly serious stubble, indicated that this was
his customary expression. Then his nose began to twitch.

‘
Ah.
So that’s what’s causing the complaining. Well, I’ve got a
kitchenette out the back there, if a bowl of warm water and a towel
is any use to you.’

I did my best. Honest. I could
feel
Rosie’s presence in
that little room as though I was psychic. However, I think I ended
up doing pretty well for someone who’s never really been at the
sharp end of parenting, and eventually carried Harry back into the
shop, wrapped in every clean tea towel I’d been able to find. My
unlikely saviour was lounging against the till.