Read The Hand That First Held Mine Online
Authors: Maggie O'farrell
Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction
The Hand That First Held Mine (17 page)
Elina frowns. She crouches and scrabbles for the letter, carefully balancing the sleeping baby on one arm. ‘Ted?’ she says. She touches his sleeve. ‘Ted, we should get a move on, the appointment’s in two minutes.’ She takes the
A – Z
from him. She looks at the letter, she looks at the map. ‘It’s along here and then left.’
A – Z
from him. She looks at the letter, she looks at the map. ‘It’s along here and then left.’
He turns the wrong way and seems to be gazing over the road at a fence.
‘Ted!’ she says, more sharply. ‘We’ve got exactly two minutes before our appointment.’
‘You go,’ he says, without turning round.
‘What?’
‘I said you go. I’ll wait here.’
‘You’re telling me . . . you’re . . . you don’t want to come to—’ Elina is so cross she cannot finish the sentence. She cannot be in his presence a minute longer. She hefts the bag strap further up her shoulder, spins round and marches off up the street, clutching the baby to her. Her red sandals seem to burn her feet and she feels more sweat soaking into the waistband of her jeans.
‘“I’ll wait here,” ’ she is muttering to herself, as she pushes her way through the swing doors. ‘“I’ll wait here” indeed, selfish pig of a—’ She breaks off because she has to give her name to the receptionist. The interior of the centre is cool and smells of lino. Elina sits on a plastic chair, still seething, still half expecting Ted to appear. She surveys the notices about breastfeeding, smoking, meningitis, vaccinations, all the while composing speeches on the subject of paternal involvement, to be delivered when Ted decides he can spare the time to show up. She has just hit on the phrase
abdication of responsibility
when she is called for her appointment.
abdication of responsibility
when she is called for her appointment.
‘Name?’ the nurse says, bending towards her computer screen.
‘Um,’ Elina fidgets with the bangle on her wrist, ‘we haven’t decided yet. It’s ridiculous, I know,’ she hears herself give a strained laugh, ‘I mean he’s almost six weeks old but—’
‘I meant your name,’ the nurse says.
‘Oh.’ That strange high laugh again. What is wrong with her? ‘It’s—’ Elina finds, to her surprise, that her adolescent stammer seems to have momentarily resurfaced. She always had trouble with words beginning with E, could never get them out, never force them beyond the area of her tonsils. She swallows, then coughs to cover it and manages to get out, ‘Elina Vilkuna.’
‘Swedish, are you?’
‘Finnish.’ Her voice seems normal, she is relieved to hear. Perhaps the stammer has gone back to wherever it’s been hiding. ‘My mother’s Swedish, though,’ she adds, without knowing why.
‘Oh. You’ll have to spell it for me.’
Elina does, and has to point out twice that Vilkuna has a
k
, not a
c
.
k
, not a
c
.
‘You speak very good English,’ the nurse says, as she takes the baby from her.
Elina watches as the woman flexes the baby’s arms, his legs, touches the top of his head. ‘Well, I’ve lived here for a while, you know, and—’
‘In London?’
‘Mostly.’ Elina is weary of telling this story, weary of people trying to sniff out her origins. ‘But all over, really,’ she says vaguely. ‘Different places.’
‘I couldn’t work out what your accent was. I thought you might be Australian at first.’ The nurse hands the baby to her. ‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘He’s fine. You have a beautiful healthy boy.’
Elina floats out of the health centre; she has the baby in her arms, the blanket draped over him to shield him from the glare. She loves that nurse, she loves her. The words
beautiful
and
healthy
and
boy
circle her head like butterflies. She would like to say them aloud; she would like to go back in and ask the nurse to tell her that again.
beautiful
and
healthy
and
boy
circle her head like butterflies. She would like to say them aloud; she would like to go back in and ask the nurse to tell her that again.
She walks back towards the main road and she is saying the words, under her breath, through her mouth, which is the shape of a smile, and she is thinking about how you can always tell if someone on the phone is smiling by the sound of their voice, and how the shape of your lips must determine this.
At the corner, where she’d left Ted, she stops and looks around.
Beautiful
, she hears again,
healthy
. She turns left, she turns right. No sign of Ted. The sun is beating down on her shoulders, on the part of her neck not covered by her apple blouse. She frowns. Where is he? She crosses the road, puzzlement giving way to her earlier irritation. Where the hell has he gone? And what is wrong with him today?
Beautiful
, she hears again,
healthy
. She turns left, she turns right. No sign of Ted. The sun is beating down on her shoulders, on the part of her neck not covered by her apple blouse. She frowns. Where is he? She crosses the road, puzzlement giving way to her earlier irritation. Where the hell has he gone? And what is wrong with him today?
She turns a corner and there he is, standing on the pavement gazing up at something, shielding his eyes. ‘What are you doing?’ she says, as she reaches him. ‘I’ve been searching everywhere for you.’
He turns and looks at her as if he’s never seen her or the baby before.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks again. ‘What’s going on?’
He squints up at the tree behind her, into the sun. ‘Do you know that song,’ he says, ‘about three crows?’
‘What?’
‘You know,’ he says and then he sings, in a cracked voice, ‘ “ Three crows sat upon a wall, sat upon a wall, three crows sat upon a wall on a cold and frosty morning.” ’
‘ Ted—’
He lowers himself to a garden wall behind him. ‘The next bit goes, “The first crow was greeting for his ma, greeting for his ma” – and so on. But I can’t remember what comes after that.’
She shifts the baby to the other arm, rearranging the blanket. Despite herself, she is picturing three crows perched on the wall next to Ted, lined up, their feathers glossy, greenish black, their beaks hooked, their scaled feet gripping the brick.
‘It must start, “The second crow”.’ Ted closes his eyes. Then he opens them and places first one hand then the other over them, as if checking his eyesight. He shakes his head. ‘I can’t remember.’
Elina comes to sit next to him. She puts her hand on his leg, feels the muscles quivering under the fabric. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Am I OK?’ he repeats.
‘Are you having one of your things? With your eyes?’
He is frowning, as if giving this question great consideration. ‘I thought I was,’ he says slowly, ‘or that I was about to. But it seems to have gone away.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Is it?’
Elina swallows. She is seized by an urge to cry. She has to turn her head away so that he doesn’t see. What is wrong with him? Maybe some men lose the plot when women have babies – Elina doesn’t know and she can’t think who to ask. Perhaps it’s normal for them to become a little distracted, a little withdrawn. It seems that just as she is beginning to rise, to struggle, blinking and gasping, to the surface, he is starting to sink. She grips his leg tighter, as if to transmit something of herself to him. Please, she wants to say, please don’t be like this, I can’t do this alone. Another part of her wants to shriek, get up off that wall, for God’s sake, and help me find a taxi. But she forces herself to speak in an even voice. ‘Why “greeting for”?’ she says. ‘Why the “for”?’
‘It means crying,’ he says, still covering one eye, then the other. ‘I think. It’s slang or dialect or something. It means he’s crying for his mother.’
‘Oh.’ Elina looks down and almost jumps because the baby has woken up. His eyes are wide open and he is staring straight at her.
‘My mum used to sing it,’ Ted is saying, ‘when I was little. She’d know about the other verses. I’ll ask her, next time I see her.’
Elina nods, touches the baby’s cheek with her finger and Ted leans in to see.
Ted is thinking about paternity leave. It is an idle, meandering train of thought he’s been having ever since he left the house with a list of things Elina needs for the baby. Or a list of things they need. Wipes, cotton wool, barrier cream – on and on it goes. Who would have thought that a person so small could generate such heaps, such mountains, of stuff, of needs?
He has been reflecting that his role, as a new father on his two weeks of paternity leave, is akin to that of a runner on a film set. The baby is the star, undoubtedly, with its every whim instantly met, its demands and timetable slavishly adhered to at all times. Elina is the director, the one responsible for proceedings, the one trying to keep everything on track. And he, Ted, is the runner. There to fetch and carry, to assist the director in her work, to mop up spillages, to make the tea.
Ted is rather pleased with this analogy. He is smiling to himself as he walks along the pavement, weaving in and out of the plane trees, sidestepping the odd mound of dog shit, swinging the shopping bags at the ends of his arms.
He turns into his front garden, fumbles for his keys. He unlocks the door and scrapes his feet on the mat, shouting, ‘Hi. It’s me. I got the stuff. All of it except the biodegradable wipes. They didn’t have them. So I got the ordinary ones. I know you won’t like them but I reckoned it was better than getting none at all.’ He pauses to let her answer. But the house is silent. ‘Elina?’ he calls. Then he stops. She might be asleep. He takes the shopping bags into the kitchen and dumps them on the counter. He puts his head around the sitting-room door, but there’s no one in there, no one stretched out on the sofa. The pram stands in the hallway, empty, the sheets rumpled, as if the baby has only just been taken out of it. Ted puts his hand to where the baby’s head lies, and is it his imagination or does it still feel a little warm?
A sound – something being dropped, a footfall, a click – from the floor above makes him look up. ‘Elina?’ he says again. But, again, there’s no answer.
He takes the stairs, slowly at first, then two at a time. ‘El,’ he says, on the landing, ‘where are you?’ She has to be here somewhere, she can’t possibly have gone out.
And yet the bedroom is empty, the duvet pulled taut over the pillows, the wardrobes shut, the mirror above the mantelpiece blank and silvery. In the bathroom the window has been left open and the curtain is drifting into the room like smoke.
He stands again on the landing, perplexed. Where can she be? He checks the bedroom again, the living room, the kitchen, just to be sure she hasn’t fallen asleep somewhere. After a moment’s thought, he checks the space behind the bed, too, just in case. He doesn’t allow himself to register what the ‘just in case’ might be. But she’s not there either. She’s gone – and the baby too.
In the hallway, he fumbles in his back pocket for his mobile phone. As he fiddles with the buttons, scrolling down for her number, he catches sight of the pram again. Where would she go, he thinks, with the baby but without the pram? He clears his throat as he lifts the phone to his ear. He must, he decides, be careful to come across as relaxed, casual; his voice mustn’t sound panicked; he mustn’t communicate how terrified he is.
He hears the line click and then the tinny sound of ringing. And, then, somewhere nearby, an echoing ring. Ted takes his phone away from his ear and listens. In the next room another phone is ringing and ringing. Ted shuts off his phone and he hears Elina’s fall silent. He lowers himself to the stairs and sits with his elbows resting on his knees, head gripped in his hands. Where can she be? What should he do? Should he call the police? But what would he say? He tells himself to stay calm, he has to stay calm, he mustn’t panic, he has to think this through, but all the time his mind is shouting, she’s gone, she’s taken the baby, she’s disappeared, and she’s so weak she can’t even walk as far as—
A deafening, shrill noise makes him leap off the stairs. For a moment, he can’t think what it is or why it is so loud. Then he realises it’s the doorbell, ringing right above his head. It’s her. She’s back. Relief surges through him and he seizes the door handle and wrenches it open, saying, ‘God, you scared me. I was—’
He stops. On the doorstep is his mother.
‘Darling,’ she says, ‘I was just passing. I met Joan – you remember Joan from across the way, with the cocker spaniel – for coffee in South End Green. There’s that lovely new café, have you been?’ She clips over the threshold, presses her cheek to his, clutching at both his shoulders. ‘Anyway, I just couldn’t pass the end of your road without coming to see you all and without a cuddle with my grandson. So,’ she holds her arms aloft, as if presenting herself on stage, ‘here I am!’
‘Um,’ Ted says. He runs a hand through his hair. He grips the edge of the door. ‘I’ve just got back,’ he mumbles. ‘I . . . er . . .’ He goes to shut the door, then looks out of it, at the path, at the pavement, just to see if she’s there, if she’s coming. ‘I’m not sure,’ he begins carefully, as he shuts the door, ‘where Elina is.’
Other books
Inner Core: (Stark, #2) by Ehrlich, Sigal
Bratfest at Tiffany's by Lisi Harrison
A Kind Of Wild Justice by Hilary Bonner
Addicted to You by Renita Pizzitola
The Silent Tide by Rachel Hore
Until the Beginning by Amy Plum
Rome: A Marked Men Novel by Jay Crownover
The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal
Monster High by Lisi Harrison
