Ricochet Baby (25 page)

Edith and Glass glance uneasily at each other. Roberta thinks, if I get up now and tell the Vances to shut up, we could all go home.

As they mill around over cups of tea, Fay walks over to Edith.

‘And how are you, Edith? The garden doing well?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ says Edith, turning away.

Bernard strolls to the window and gazes outside.

‘This is kind of like
Oprah
or the
Ricki
Lake
Show
, isn’t it?’ Sally says to Roberta. ‘Everybody slagging each other off. I’m quite
looking
forward to the next bit.’

O
NLY THE
C
OOKSLEYS
haven’t slagged anyone off, at least not directly. They have paid good money to have that done for them, sitting, all the while, with their remote smiles fixed in place. But now the Cooksleys and the Nichols are locked in silence, looking at each other.

‘So who’s going to start?’ says Edith. It’s the first thing she has said.

‘Wouldn’t it be best if we did what Mary suggested? Just fling a few ideas up on the board?’ Laura says.

‘Who’s going to write on the board?’ asks Sally. Roberta sees that she hopes it will be her.

But already Fay has seized a felt pen and is standing in front of the whiteboard. ‘I guess I get to do a lot of this,’ she cries. Standing there in her pretty clothes, she makes it seem like a party game they are about to embark upon. She draws a line down the centre of the board, and heads one column ‘For’ and the other ‘Against’.

‘For and against what?’ says Glass.

‘I would have thought that was obvious. For and against Nathan living with Roberta.’

Quickly, under ‘For’ she jots, Roberta Is Nathan’s Birth Mother. ‘Anyone think of anything else? Okay, let’s move on to the other side. I think Brian’s already made a couple of observations on this.’

More writing, this time in the ‘Against’ column. Nathan Is Well Cared For In Present Situation.

‘Orla and me could help look after him.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Glass is the only person in the room who doesn’t look
surprised
. ‘If you just stopped all this shit,’ Bernard says. ‘Soon as Orla gets here we’ll look after him okay. Till Roberta’s ready, of course,’ he adds hurriedly.

Fay’s nostrils flare, as if he hasn’t spoken. Developing Well, she writes in the lengthening column under ‘Against’. Much Loved.

‘Put that in the other column too,’ says Edith.

Fay obliges, and continues with her own list. She says the words aloud as if some people present may not be able to read. Roberta Has Not Been Well. Roberta Possibly Needs More Treatment. Conditions At Home Are Not Ideal.

‘Who says they’re not?’ Edith says.

‘Oh come on,’ says Laura, ‘you’re into the grog all the time. I’ve heard about that.’ The refinement in her voice has slipped.

‘It’s not true,’ says Edith.

‘Liar,’ says Fay, the chalk stopping in mid-air. ‘You were totally inebriated last Christmas Day.’

‘Pissed as a newt,’ says Dorothy.

‘You old bitch,’ shouts Edith.

‘Lost her rag, wouldn’t you say?’ Laura says. ‘Really, you don’t need to say anything to these people — they do it all to themselves.’

‘Well, what do we all think?’ smiles Fay.

‘I think that sums things up pretty well, dear,’ says Milton, straightening the crease in his trousers.

Glass stands up, his face cold with fury. ‘Not one of you has asked my daughter what she thinks.’

Paul shrugs his shoulders. ‘Okay, Roberta,’ he says. ‘So what do you think?’

‘We could manage.’ whispers Roberta.

‘You and your boyfriend?’

Roberta sits bolt upright. ‘I haven’t got a boyfriend.’

‘Oh come on, some bloody unemployed fisherman, doing
under the counter spray painting out in the wops. You’re as big a liar as your mother.’ He pulls a disgusted face in the direction of Edith, who has sunk into an angry silence.

‘What about your girlfriend?’

‘Yeah, what about her? Showing up here,’ says cousin Sally. ‘Cheeky little cow.’

‘Prudence isn’t my girlfriend.’

‘Well, she was,’ says Roberta. ‘That’s how I got landed with you, between shifts.’

‘That’s enough, Roberta,’ says Fay.

They all begin to shout then. This is a family conference,
hasn’t
anybody remembered that? They all get to have their say, okay?

Roberta’s head drops to her knees, as if her neck is a stem holding up a dying flower. Her hands curl over the top of her head and clasp it, under the felt hat. A pulse throbs in her swollen
temples
.

‘I want Nathan,’ she says, her voice muffled in the rayon and cotton mix skirt from Miss Millie’s. ‘I never meant to give him away.’

Glass kneels beside his daughter, desolate in the face of her inconsolable grief. ‘Dad,’ she says. ‘Oh Dad, I never meant it. You don’t know, you just don’t know what it was like.’

‘Yes, I do,’ says Glass.

Bernard, standing by the window, suddenly bangs his fists down on the keyboard of the old piano, causing a sullen, meowing stream of noise to echo round the room. Roberta lifts her face. Surely, someone will come. But nobody does. This is it. This is a family conference. They are getting on with things.

I
T IS HOURS
before it is done, the recommendations delivered to the reconvened group, headed by Mary Mason. The Nichols mostly remain silent.

The families leave ahead of the social workers and doctors. As Roberta passes Dr Q, her eyes firmly before her, he speaks to her. ‘I’d like to see your hair,’ he says.

The pupils of his eyes are the same tired, friendly brown,
surrounded
by their faded white rims. She takes off her hat, shaking her head, marvelling again that it is so light.

He gives her both thumbs up. She waits for more.

‘Your move, Roberta.’

O
RLA IS NOT
on the plane; he knew it all the time that he sat in that room. Bernard had sent her the money for the ticket. Did she get as far as Heathrow, he wonders, and then turn around and go home? Or did she simply go out shopping in Belfast in the morning, and pretend to herself, while she was having tea in a café, that it was not the day she was booked to fly to New Zealand?

Bernard sits outside the Walnut Presbyterian Church Hall and thinks for a few minutes. He is tempted to go to the hotel for a pint, but it is nearly time for milking, and he always goes to the shed.

He starts the wagon and pulls out of the parking lot while the rest of the family is still clustered around looking distracted and unhappy. He drives slowly towards the crest of the hill and looks down on the valley where the farm lies. He sees the Maori houses, which is what Orla called them. He loved Orla. He doesn’t know whether he does any longer, or whether he still does but has been conquered by his failure to love anyone well.

His gun rests on the seat beside him. Bernard never travels without that lovely, living piece of wood. Nobody’s safe in this world without fire in their hand, he has always believed. But what is he to do with it, and who can he save except himself? He runs his hand longingly over the barrel.

Down at his own house, he sees movement. Wendy at the clothesline, he thinks, though it is too far away for him to be sure. Oddly, he hasn’t been unhappy with the peculiar old woman who has been living in the house with him these past few weeks. He has found himself laughing, on the quiet, at some of the weird things she says. Perhaps his mother has known that what he most needs in life is someone to pick up his socks and have a few laughs.

He lets the clutch out and rolls on down the hill towards the farm.

W
ENDY KNOWS, FROM
the way they walk into the house, how badly things have gone. She has made a frosted lemon cake and left it in the kitchen for Edith, but without a note.

The young man she thinks of as the courting gentleman is waiting in the gazebo by the central rose garden where the verbena used to bloom and where Wendy first heard the madrigal singers, not far from the spot where she last saw Sarah. He has been there for more than an hour. She watches Roberta alight from her parents’ car and walk towards him, sees the way they cling together. Glass, looking stooped, comes out of the house again, heading towards the milking shed.

And here, at last, is Bernard, pulling up in his driveway. She sighs with relief, although she doesn’t know why she was so
worried
about him.

‘Going somewhere?’ he asks, when he sees her. She has packed her velvet bag and some plastic bags of odds and ends she has accumulated over the last months.

‘I’m hoping to catch a ride from the neighbours in a few
minutes
,’ she says. ‘I’m going to catch the train.’

‘I’ll run you to the station,’ says Bernard.

‘You can’t do that, it’s time for milking.’

‘I’ll worry about that.’

‘You must be in a hurry to get rid of me,’ she laughs, trying to make a joke of it as she does up her seat belt.

‘You weren’t as bad as I expected,’ he admits.

‘Have they sorted it out about the baby?’ Although, really, she knows the answer.

‘I don’t reckon.’ He lights a cigarette with one hand and inhales in a long, thoughtful way.

‘Bernard, what are you going to do?’ There is something
different
about him that she can’t read.

He blows the smoke out, filling up the cabin of the wagon. ‘Stop worrying about life,’ he says, with a white grin. ‘Your stop, ma’am.’ He pulls in at the station and lets her out. ‘Don’t do
anything
I wouldn’t do.’

When he gets back to the house, Bernard begins to pack. He doesn’t take much: a couple of changes of clothes, a few
photographs
, stuffed into a red backpack with a plastic tartan stripe down the side, the guitar his parents bought him as a child, some faded sheet music from the days when he tried to learn the
instrument
, his wallet and credit cards. There is pain in the collection of some of these items, but he can bear it, he tells himself. The only way to deal with it is to take it with him.

Looking round the house, he considers the evidence of Orla that is left behind. An apron hanging on the laundry door, her scuffed slippers at the bottom of the broom cupboard. Why she would leave them in the broom cupboard he can’t imagine, but that’s Orla. The wardrobes contain some of her clothes, the
towelling
dressing gown still grubby round the cuffs. There are
ornaments
sent to them by her mother for Christmas, mostly beer mugs with daft Irish sayings inscribed on them. Each of these items he carries into the room where they slept together, placing them in a neat pile. He is disappointed to discover that there is no cash lying around the house in the places where he stored it. He guesses that Wendy’s velvet bag carries a comfortably fat roll of his money.

‘C
OME AWAY WITH
me,’ says Josh.

‘I can’t,’ I say.

‘What can you do here?’

‘Nothing, but what will they think?’

‘They’ll think we’re having it off together, I expect.’

‘Just walk out like this?’

‘Bring a jacket. Tell them you’re off.’

In the house, my mother sits gazing into space. ‘I have to go,’ I say to her. She is holding a clean glass in her hands, turning it round and round.

‘That won’t bring your baby back,’ she says. She has noticed Josh’s van. I expect she has seen us in the garden.

‘I’m in love with him,’ I tell her.

‘Love,’ she says, ‘oh, love, is it?’

‘Mum, please.’

She looks at me, her eyes dark with a mixture of anger and grief. ‘It’s hardly the time.’

‘What’s a good time, Mum?’ I say. Perhaps she wants to tell me there is some grace and happiness that will tell me when the time is right, but I know she can’t do that. She wouldn’t know happiness if she fell over it. I want him now, I could tell her, right now, when everything about it is wrong, and I’m bereft. But I don’t speak. There is nothing inside me except hollow space and maybe that is a state of grace, which can be filled only with desire and its outcome. There has to be something to put in its place or I’ll die. An extreme way of looking at it, but this is how I feel. I can’t sink any lower than I have gone this afternoon; there has to
be some way up. I think of stopping to explain, to remind her that I am an adult, that I know about sex and its consequences, but in a way we would both know that wasn’t true. I know only a
version
of it all, Paul’s version. Besides, she is familiar with all this; she understands the way I’m compelled to go after Josh, but she can’t admit it to me.

‘Don’t worry about it, Mum,’ I say, heading off to my room to pick up a jacket.

‘Roberta,’ she calls after me.

‘Yes?’ I am determined not to go back.

‘Why did you leave him?’

I can’t help it, I go back to the kitchen. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Paul. People can work on their marriages. You never gave yours a chance.’

‘Haven’t you ever wanted to leave?’

‘I had children,’ she says, her voice virtuous. ‘So did you.’

‘Don’t hand me that crap,’ I answer. ‘You stayed for yourself.’

‘This Josh.’

‘What about him?’

‘He’ll be a one-night stand, you see if I’m not right,’ she says.

This is about as nasty as it can get without us coming to blows. I walk out of the house without saying goodbye.

Inside, I know my mother is thinking about drinking, if she hasn’t already begun. A twinge of guilt nearly makes me turn back. Then I think that it’s up to her whether she drinks or not. I didn’t ask her to stop on my account.

W
E DRIVE SOUTH
to the coast, to an old fisherman’s cottage at Ngawi, in a landscape of giant rocks and tall cliffs. The village is perched hard up against the sea, the beach festooned with orange-red
cray-pot
buoys. Dark blue echiums with massed stems of flowers
flourish
in the windswept gardens. The cottage belongs to a friend of Josh’s. The key is behind the fencepost, although the door is so loose on its hinges we can just about push our way in.

We have bought food on the way at a remote store near the crossroads, tins of corned beef and mangoes and a loaf of bread. He has a six of beer in the back of the van. He opens one and hands it to me when we are inside the cottage. It is a gloomy little place with a naked bulb in the kitchen, and a dim shade above the bed.

The air is heavy, with a dark wind. He is nervous, I can see that now, more than he was before, when he thought that he would have to persuade me, or that I might walk away from him. I run my hands over my stubbly head and feel a total absence of desire,
shivering
, both from real cold and from fear. Night has fallen, and there is an open fireplace but no wood.

‘I’ll gather some driftwood from the beach,’ Josh offers. It is an excuse for us not to go to bed.

‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘It’s just that my feet are cold.’

He hesitates. ‘Take your shoes off,’ he says softly.

I slip off my tidy sling-backs. He kneels and holds my instep.

‘Wait,’ I say, and unpeel my pantyhose, turning away from him. Remember, I have been to a family group conference this afternoon; I wear my plain, cheap clothes; I have tried to look respectable.

‘Lie on the bed,’ he says, ‘I won’t do anything else.’

I lie down on the bunk, while he sits at the end, warming my feet with his hands. He strokes them with a long, slow, deliberate motion, caressing my arches, kissing my heels and ankles. Heat rises through me, travelling up through my body.

‘Let me look at you,’ I say, as we begin to undress each other. We begin our inspection, the slow exploration of one another’s skin. I find the word ‘Alys’ tattooed on his hip. ‘Who is she?’

‘My wife,’ he says.

‘You said you weren’t married.’

‘I’m not. I was. Does it matter?’

I consider this; I don’t know how many more women I’m going to find. Josh unleashes his hair from its pony-tail, letting it fall about my face, my shorn head inside the tent of his hair. ‘I love you,’ he says.

I kiss him on his face, his cheeks, his mouth. ‘I love you, Josh,’ I say, ‘I love you, I love you too.’ I can’t bear to wait for him any more.

An electrical storm passes over the coastline in the night, and between waking and sleeping and making love we fumble for the candles in the darkness. Their light smoulders on the walls.

‘I want something to eat,’ I tell him.

‘You’ve got an appetite,’ he says, but he gets up and opens the tins of food and carries them over to the bed. I let him feed me morsels of meat and fruit, like a bird with its young, sucking the pink beef in its gelatinous mass.

‘Do you want a joint?’

I haven’t smoked for years. It’s long past time for my medicine and I’ve got no idea what it will do to me.

‘I don’t mind if you do.’

He shakes his head. ‘It’s okay.’

Josh seems as nearly perfect as it is possible for any human being to be; the flickering light ripples over his strong shoulders and torso, his pubic hair rising in a dark line up the centre of his belly towards his navel. I can’t keep my hands away from it, from him, although I’m exhausted by my discoveries and by passion. I can see that he is tired, too.

While we eat, and drink more beer, I hold the soles of my feet together, my knees apart, and in the candlelight I see that I look like a large golden frog. It seems I have learned the
mysterious
truth: about happiness and need and depravity, the way each insatiably feeds off the next. I haven’t thought about Nathan for several hours, but remembering him now — the curve of his cheek, the mop of curls I wasn’t allowed to touch — I begin to cry. Josh holds me in his arms, rocking me to and fro, and I think of what my mother said, earlier in the afternoon: this won’t bring your baby back. Outside the storm has cleared, blown out to sea by the harsh winds.

‘Look,’ he says. I follow the direction of his gaze, beyond the uncurtained window. Stars sweep down in rivers and fields of light, close to the horizon.

‘Scorpius rising. Fishermen know stars. If we don’t, we get lost.’

‘Will you go back to sea?’ I’ve stopped crying, calmed by his voice and by the sight of the sky.

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘It might happen.’

‘I don’t want you to.’ Immediately, I feel his body tense.

‘We’ll see.’

‘What’s going to happen about Leda?’ As soon as I have said this, I regret it.

Very carefully, he lays me back on the bed, disentangling
himself
from me, and pulls the blanket up. ‘It’ll start to get light soon. D’you want to get some sleep?’

‘Josh,’ I say. ‘Please, I’m sorry.’

‘I know you are,’ he says.

‘But you did say you loved me.’

‘So I do. But I told you I wouldn’t leave Leda in the lurch, didn’t I?’

‘You’re not going to leave her?’

‘Not just like that.’ He is dragging his clothes on, in a hurry. ‘Look,’ he says, when he has tucked his shirt into his jeans, ‘you’re not ready for this.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ I say, turning my face to the wall. ‘Blame it on me.’

We glare at each other. Electricity lights the room again, so that we are caught, suddenly, in blue light. Gently, he touches the side of my face, in the way he has. ‘I wanted this to be a good time.’

‘It is,’ I say, and hold his hand. But I feel older, cold again and drained. He offers to sleep on the chair in the kitchen, but I tell him not to be silly, and, after a while, he climbs under the blanket beside me, still in his clothes, and we sleep together. When I wake he has unzipped his clothes and we begin again. I see that desire and possession are not far apart. I am possessed by him; I can’t see how he can resist my need to possess him, to have him all for myself.