Friday, 13 August
The heat makes it hard to comfort Bria. It is not the weather for hugging, for cuddling, for swaddling her baby in blankets and getting cosy together. Even the warmth of the bottle seems to distress her. It has been another terrible night spent pacing and rocking and sighing and crying. Sometimes she rocks when she isn’t holding her baby, as if it is really her who needs comforting and not Bria. A little after 4 a.m. her daughter finally drops off, the hiccupping sobs slowly lessening, the spaces between them growing longer. By then, though Catherine is overtired, she has her second wind, the blood seeming to whir through her veins. She draws a chair up to the cot and sits quietly contemplating her baby. She is so beautiful that it robs Catherine of her breath. The love she has for her feels like gravity. She is the centre of a whirlpool, the nucleus of her life.
Outside, the main road keeps up its endless dirge. The light that is beginning to filter through the open window is a grey-blue. It reminds her of Isleworth Pool. She misses swimming. She will start going again and she will bring Bria with her. She will teach her daughter to love the water, not to be sucked underneath it. She should be at her parents’ house now. Sean told her to go, made her promise to. Well, she lied. Hadn’t he lied to her dozens of times? She doesn’t want to be lectured by her mother on the do’s and don’ts of childcare, on how abysmally she is neglecting the former and enacting the latter. He is in choppy seas, her husband, heading for a tempest. He has done something stupid, something rash, something reckless. She knows it instinctively. Oh, he tried to cover it up, his tone chrome bright. But as she listened it was apparent to her, and she felt anger and pity vying for pole position in her heart.
‘There is absolutely nothing to go fretting yourself about, Catherine. I’m totally in control. It’s only a matter of bridging the gap, you know.’
And she thought, how wide, how wide is that gap, Sean? Because there comes a point when it’s not feasible any more to bridge a gap. Be honest, it’s not a gap, it’s a crevasse. And you’ve marooned us in it. But she’d said, ‘Are you sure?’
‘’Course I am, darlin’. I’d prefer it though, if you’d go to your parents. A couple of nights, so. That’s all.’ She said nothing. ‘Catherine? You will go, won’t you? Take Bria. Promise me?’
‘I promise,’ she echoed dully.
‘Good girl.’ And when he’d called her that, a good girl, she’d wanted to scream at him that she wasn’t a girl, she was a woman. And she needed a man beside her.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see an old friend, that’s all. I’ll be back before you know it.’ Then came a hiatus and just the sound of them both breathing, like divers drawing air through their mouthpieces.
‘Does she have a telephone number, your old friend?’
‘Catherine, what are you thinking of ? Don’t be silly. This is strictly business. Ring Owen if you need anything. At the flat or at the market, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And, Catherine?’
‘Yes?’
‘Kiss Bria for me. Tell her that her daddy loves her more than she will ever know.’
Catherine has read that the orchestra played music while the Titanic went down. She reflects that it was an insane thing to do. Surely they would have been more usefully employed bending their wits to surviving. But what if it was hopeless, truly hopeless and they each knew it, deep down, a fact chiselled in the gathering icebergs? They had a choice, they could all go to pieces, gibbering and squawking with panic, or they could carry on as normal, keep their dignity and show some courage. She will not go to her parents. Bria stirs in her sleep. Her closed eyelids have a lavender hue on them. There is a milk blister on her rosebud lips. Her cheeks are flushed. Her curls are spread against the cot mattress. It seems beyond credulity that such a wondrous child can have resulted from the debris of her life.
But as the light in the room strengthens, she has the strangest sensation that she is swimming up from the deep, rising to the surface where she will take a life-sustaining breath. Today is special, set apart from all the other days that have gone before, because today she is meeting a friend, Mara, at the recreation ground. She has only known her a week, and in that short space her outlook has altered from irredeemable to hopeful. No, she will not confide in her mother and have her rain reproaches down upon her. Rather, she will tell her new friend about Sean’s latest fiasco. She will talk freely, a concept so alien to her that it is like learning another language. And afterwards, as she has done every day this week, she will feel as light as chaff.
***
‘So Owen, when is Naomi coming back, eh?’ Enrico greets him as he enters the gloomy fug of the market.
‘Soon. The holiday did her the world of good.’
‘I knew she would love it there.’
‘Yeah, it was great. Really kind of you to arrange that. You’ve a good family.’ His eyes are still adjusting to the gloom and the Italian’s face is all shadow, excepting the jumping purple beads and the stringy orange beard.
‘Who is more handsome, me or my brother, Lorenzo?’ He gives a snort of laughter.
‘Impossible to choose between you.’ He has placed a hand on Owen’s shoulder, hampering his progress. ‘Him and your father, they’ve done a wonderful job restoring the cottage.’
‘But there is no money there and the tourist season is too short. He’ll leave eventually, the way I did. Hey, did you see Teodora?’ he laughs and catches hold of his St Christopher medallion. ‘The ghost of the lake?’
Owen’s jaw tightens as he visualizes the drunken intercourse with Naomi on the banks of the reservoir. It takes him a second to compose himself. He knows the expected retort should be some humorous quip, but he cannot deliver it. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he says feebly, rubbing a hand clammy with perspiration on the back pocket of his jeans. ‘No spooks turned up while we were there.’
He shrugs. ‘Well then, did you swim in the lake?’
‘I can’t swim.’ Enrico lifts an eyebrow.
‘But it was hot? Hotter than here, I bet?’
‘Yes, it was very hot.’ He sucks in his lower lip, then, ‘Naomi swam.’
‘Ah, of course she did.’
‘She should be back next week, then you can ask her all about it yourself. Look, I’d better go and open up.’
Enrico grins and stands aside. Then, as he passes, ‘So you’re the man now, eh, Owen? You’re the man.’
Later on, Owen stares down at his own reflection in the mirrored counter looking for the man, but only seeing the choppy blond hair and anxious eyes of a boy. His features are partially concealed by dozens of pairs of shimmering hair grips. He has the sudden urge to swipe them onto the floor, to stamp on them. Because of his own troubled dreams and Naomi’s worrying confession, he has had little sleep. Now, as he replays her words in the busy warren of the market, far from dispelling his alarm, they only seem to intensify it.
‘I wanted to see them for myself. Catherine and Sean’s baby, Bria.’
He feels he should be doing something – but what? All these secrets and no one to turn to, no one to share them with, to lessen his load of cares. The conditions in this hell hole are inhuman, he decides. It feels as if there is no circulation, no ventilation, as if they are all struggling to breathe the same tiny condensed mass of stuffy foul air. In the heat the odours of unwashed bodies, of sweat and incense, leather and rubber, seem as pungent as putrid meat. He wishes Sean was here. As soon as he gets back he will tell him what Naomi has been doing. Then he can deal with it. Last night’s revelations have filled him with ominous portents, and persuaded him irrefutably that she is far from well. As for her assurances that she will not continue in this ludicrous charade, he doubts their sincerity. Still, he comforts himself, there is no risk to mother and baby today. They are not in Hounslow. Sean said that they are staying with Catherine’s parents, beyond Naomi’s reach. Besides, it isn’t his problem, it is theirs. What is any of this to him? In a matter of days he will be gone. In a couple of months he probably won’t even be able to remember their names, Naomi, Sean . . . Catherine . . . Catherine and Bria.
The morning inches by, the confines of the market as claustrophobic as a dungeon. He waves away a customer. ‘I told you, we haven’t got any in that colour. The next aisle. They have them, love.’ He is starting to sound like Sean.
He leans heavily on the counter, arms braced, hands splayed for support, his head sagging. His homing-pigeon thoughts keep finding their way back to Catherine and Bria. Sensations claim him, the way Catherine’s tears damped his shirt, the snug fit of Bria in his arms. Covering his face with a hand, he blinks back tears. Then, he rolls his head and lets his eyes rove the concrete ceiling. Muzzy pokers of white light arrow off the fluorescent tubes. Right on cue Gary Glitter starts hollering that he is the leader of the gang. He needs to pull himself together. This is his overactive imagination. He is fabricating something sinister where there is only understandable inquisitiveness, and yes, perhaps resentment. But that is all. If Sean phones, he will tell him everything. If not, then, when he sees him on Sunday. There is certainly no need to panic about it.
‘Anyone serving?’ comes an American voice from behind him. More from habit than self-control, in the instant it takes for Clark Kent to become Superman, he is the convivial salesman, hurrying to hook down a handbag that the customer is pointing at. She is a large, loud woman with a tired, bleach-blonde perm, a slack-skinned face, and restless desirous eyes. ‘Oh, don’t you just love this bag, Ada?’ With a wave of her hand she conjures a thinner version of herself. He launches into his sales pitch, his spiel packed with effusive flattery, and vows of the best possible deal ever. In fact, it is a steal at the price he is going to give her. He has just tucked away the notes she gave him when he spots Blue striding towards him, his face distorted with wrath.
***
Mara is in control. She is fond of Naomi but she lacks the necessary purpose. She has tried cohabiting, a half-and-half arrangement. But experience has taught her that it doesn’t work. The problem is that Naomi lets The Blind Ones take advantage of her. She doesn’t stand up to them, doesn’t take them on. She wants the ruthless streak. Mara is the ruthless streak. In fact, Naomi owes her everything. If she didn’t step in from time to time and take the upper hand, Naomi would still be procrastinating, and nothing would ever be accomplished. Mara is on the train to Hounslow where she will meet their new friend, Catherine. Opposite her is a woman with a bawling baby. The woman looks at her bump and gives her a sisterly smile. Mara strokes it com placently. Her baby, when it comes, won’t cry. She will have a special baby, not like the squalling red-faced infant floundering just feet from her. The shrill lament feels as if it is trapped in her head, an angry wasp repeatedly stinging her thoughts, injecting its poison into her reason. What she does not understand is why no one else in the carriage seems to bother about it. Are they Blind Ones too, pretending, pretending, day and night, acting out their charades? Miss Elstob has deaf ears when it comes to baby’s yelling.
‘That baby’s sick with the fever, Miss,’ she tells her. ‘All burning up, you feel her brow. See if it’s not.’
‘Mind your own business, Mara, and don’t be cute with me,’ Miss says, cuffing her about the ears until the blood throbs inside them, and they feel thick and hot as drop scones fresh off the griddle.
But today she wakes with the conviction that something is about to happen, something out of the ordinary, something that will forever scatter the regimented days of her existence. It’s not as if there is a clue, though. In the bedroom are the same six beds all with blanketed humps inside them. She can see through the window that the sun is in its usual place in the sky. Baby is crying in the cot beside her, and she can hear Miss Elstob downstairs banging about in the kitchen. It is the school holidays, and the house is as crowded as ever. It is so jam packed that you can’t help tripping over children and bumping into them. She dreams of being alone, all alone, of having a place where you can hear your own thoughts without them being chopped up like firewood. In the coal cupboard she can hear them loud as a cannon some nights, her thoughts. But it’s not a good place, that cupboard. It’s filthy. And while the voice is cracking in her head, she is getting filthy too. The coal dust gets into her cuts and turns them blue. So when she comes out she is black and blue.
But it’s been a while since they chucked her in there. She’s been good. And if it wasn’t for baby howling away like a banshee, she might stay that way. Not long after breakfast the house gets empty. All the children ran out of it, and so does Miss Elstob. It is on account of something bad occurring that they rush out of doors. In house seven, one of the biggest boys, big as a man he is, a bully called Arthur Datcher, has lost his temper. A fight started between him and the house mother, Miss Lister. She is an evil cow too, with a goitre on her neck that makes it look as if she’s swallowed an egg that won’t go down. He shouted at her, and she shouted back and slapped him round the solid block of his face. The boy who brought the news said Arthur puffed himself up then, like a big old turkey, and his face went all purple. They were washing the breakfast things when he seized up a fork. He didn’t hold it like a fork, the boy said. He held it like a knife. And then he sort of turned round very slowly in the corner, where he was standing. His nostrils got big as cherries and he stared at Miss Lister, and stared and stared. He pawed the ground with his foot like a bull. He was pop-eyed and dribbling. But she just went on shouting until she was almost hoarse. Then suddenly he charged. He threw himself at her, directly at her, stabbing with the fork. She took a fall and well, the fork went into her cheek.
‘Gah! He speared it like it was a tomato,’ the boy said. ‘It’s dreadful bad, and Mother’s squawking and rolling all about.’ Then he told them that an ambulance was coming and the police, and that Arthur was being taken away, and that they should come and see. After he dashed off, all Mara could hear was the clomping of shoes on the wooden floor, and Miss Elstob’s boots too. And they all ran to take a peep for themselves.
Mara doesn’t know how long they’ll be, but for now the house is hollow as a shell. Her voice when she speaks has a bit of an echo. She hasn’t been in a cave but she’s been told caves have echoes too. Baby is upstairs in the cot and still crying. The cry has got thinner though, as if baby is losing its voice, like Miss Lister did. Mara looks all round and waves her hands in the space. There is so much of it to push about. She picks up Miss Elstob’s pinny and ties it on. It’s a bit too long for her, like an evening dress but the wrong material.
‘I’m going to make believe that this is my house, that I’m Mother. And that baby is my baby,’ she announces to no one. Then she goes upstairs and tells baby, ‘Because I’m Mother, my job is to make you stop crying.’
Baby looks up at her with slitty eyes crusted with dried ooze. Thick green snot cakes her nose so that she huffs and snorts to breathe. Her mouth is pushed wide open to make room for all the yells to come squalling out. And her face is apple red and fat as a grapefruit. Her brown hair is sticking down as if it has been glued on. ‘Poor baby,’ says Mara. ‘Mother’s here now to take care of you.’ She picks baby up, and she is all hot and wriggly, stinking of wee, with a sodden nappy heavy and dropping off. She carries baby downstairs to the bathroom, pulls off her nightshirt and nappy, and lays her on a towel on the floor. There are two baths in here, a small one for babies, and a large one for the big children. The baby bath is a white enamel tub resting on tall fluted metal legs. Because it’s high up you can stand when you bathe baby. There are two shiny silver taps at the end of it nearest the wall. And there is a soap dish made of white china screwed above them, with a big tablet of soap in it. Mara only runs the cold tap, puts it on full so that the water comes crashing out. It’s like a waterfall. She’s seen one of those on a walk. And it’s so fast that the bath is full up before she knows it.
‘Now Mother is going to take away all your hotness,’ she explains to baby. ‘This is like water medicine, and when I pull you out you will be all well again. And you’ll stop crying and go to sleep. Then I can go to sleep too.’
But baby just makes yammering noises and kicks thin legs and thrashes thin arms. So Mara scoops her up and holds her over the icy bath. It is quite difficult because baby is like an eel, bending this way and that, and trying to look sideways at what is under her. ‘One, two, three,’ Mara counts and she begins to lower baby. When baby’s bottom and back touch the icy water, she jumps like a frog. She is slippery with sweat, and Mara has to hold on tight to avoid dropping her. Now baby is struggling so much that she has to push her down, push her into the water, down, down to the bottom of the bath and hold her there. She is much stronger than Mara realized, so that she has to use all her brawn to keep her under. Even so, baby looks very pretty beneath the water with her brown hair waving like weed, and tiny silver air bubbles sticking to her face as if shiny beads have been stitched into her skin, and her eyes all wide with the crusts washing away.
That is the instant when the door bursts open and Miss Elstob is standing there. For a second she is made of stone. Then her thin body cracks like a whip. She grabs Mara by the hair and sends her spinning across the room. Then she plunges her scrawny arms in the water and yanks baby out, all dripping silver and wobbly, the loveliest quiet baby Mara has ever seen.
She lays baby on the towel and presses her tiny ribcage. And now Miss Elstob is sort of screaming in air, her forehead a tangle of wrinkles. Lots of faces pile up on top of each other in the doorway, because the children are all back. And just like the boy described Arthur, they are pop-eyed, all their mouths slack and fish-flapping. Curled up and holding her broken head together, Mara sees that baby is being sick, silver sick, water sick. And that the sick is not just being coughed out of her mouth, but out of her nose too, along with the watery snot. Then baby is whining in breaths, the sound like a bow scraped quickly over a violin. Mother wraps her up in the towel, and gives her to one of the older girls to hold.
‘Get a blanket for her, double quick. We’ll take her to the sick bay,’ she orders. When she turns on Mara, she is white with rage. And seeing this whiteness, Mara knows that it is much more awful than any red anger you can imagine. It is what comes after the red. It is so scalding that all the colour is burnt away.
‘What were you doing to the baby?’ she says in a radio-hiss voice.
‘I was making her cool, making her all cool,’ Mara whimpers. ‘’Cos baby was sick with the fever.’
Mother pulls out some of her hair dragging her to the coal cupboard, so that her scalp is bleeding when the door is slammed shut, dripping down her cheeks when the key is turned. She hugs her head and imagines that she is mending it, pasting chunks of her skull back together. Her hands are sticky with blood. She can hear the children calling her names through the door.
‘Baby killer.’ ‘Mad Mara.’ ‘Mara’s a murderer.’ ‘She’s gone and drowned the baby.’
She throws lumps of coal at them to show them that she doesn’t care, and they bang on the wood. Then she digs, and piece by piece begins burying herself under the coal mound. When she sucks her fingers she can taste coal dust and blood all mixed up. She wanted to be Mother, that’s all, to be Mother and for baby to be hers. Then Owen won’t go. He’ll stay to help her look after baby, and they’ll be a family, Mother, Father and baby. She loves Owen and he loves her back. He mustn’t ever leave her and go with someone else, the way Walt did. He mustn’t grow bored of her and want to throw her away. She thinks about her thighs locking him inside her, and her body wet and sleek with the lake. She thinks about the crying baby and how she gets confused sometimes, so that it seems the crying is coming from her, that she is the cry baby. She thinks about Mother, not the house mother but her real one, the one who left her behind and died.
She closes her eyes and sees lipstick edging Mother’s front teeth, pearly pink, and her headscarf fluttering in the wind, and the sun shivering on her sunglasses, and golden buttons on the uniform of the soldier, and the salt taste of the sea on her tongue, the way it carried her in its swingeing grey-green arms, how it beat the badness out of her, broke up the coal in her and turned the nasty dust to gleaming white sand. The last thing she hears before the black rubs her out, is the high-pitched whistling scream of the train as it roars into a station. Or is it baby’s piercing cries hacking at her head again, making it ache so?
***
Raw terror grips Owen. His heart bucks, his senses sharpen, nausea takes hold. He might run if he thought that his legs would carry him, if he thought that he stood a chance. Knowing it is risky to turn your back on an attacking dog, he faces them, Blue and his thug. His back is to the counter, his arms propping him up. There is no browsing today. They bullet through the shoppers and stall-holders, shoving aside anyone that makes the mistake of obstructing them. They wear dark trousers, long-sleeved shirts, ties – but no jackets. Blue hops agilely up on the stool, his minder flanking him.
‘You heard from Sean?’ Blue asks without preamble, his blue eyes like lasers burning into Owen’s.
‘No,’ Owen lies. ‘I told you yesterday.’
Blue loosens his tie. The blue and gold stripes remind Owen of his old school uniform tie. ‘That was yesterday. This is today. A lot can change in twenty-four hours,’ he says in a tone of barely concealed threat. He undoes his top button.
‘He went off at the start of the week, said he’d be back by Thursday. Like I said before. But he hasn’t showed yet.’
Blue winces and draws a finger delicately over his effeminate mouth. ‘What’s your name?’ he says softly, the finger still sliding over his lips.
‘Owen.’ His legs are trembling so that he has to concentrate on keeping them braced.
‘Well, Owen, your boss has my money. A great deal of money, as it happens. And I want it back. Understand?’ He lowers his hand and picks a speck of dust off one of his trouser legs.
Owen nods. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about that. I only work for him part time.’ His high voice and the rapid pace of his words betray his dread.
‘Are you smart, Owen?’ Blue asks.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Are you smart?’ he repeats obdurately. Owen shrugs. ‘Because you’re not telling me what I want to hear, and that’s plain idiotic.’ He grinds his teeth. The minder sees off a couple of customers.
‘If I had any information, if I knew Sean’s whereabouts, I’d pass it on to you.’ He flicks his tongue over his dry lips, swallows, then clears his throat.
Blue takes a thoughtful breath, surveying him head to toe, then blinks slowly. ‘You’re trying my patience, kid.’
Owen manufactures a fretful sigh and scratches the back of his head. ‘What do you want me to say? I’ve told you the truth.’
‘Oh I hope so, for your sake, Owen. I do hope so.’
‘Honestly, I wish I could be more—’ But he never finishes the sentence. At a sign from Blue, the minder lunges forwards and lands a punch directly in his solar plexus. Owen folds like a hairpin, every atom of breath knocked out of him. He is trying to hoop air back into his collapsed lungs, but he is winded and they will not inflate. The blurred shapes of his own shoes rush at his eyes. He is suffocating, dark stars zooming towards him. He totters, nearly overbalances, feels a hand bunching the collar of his shirt, hoisting him up like a puppet. He is going to pass out. In a second the stars will meld together and become one glittering black moon, obliterating all else. Then a merciful vein of air seeps into him. Slowly, and with a scalpel thrust of pain, his lungs begin to swell. Immediately, he is seized by a spasm of violent coughing, his breath cannoning out of him with pumice-stone friction. The hand unhooks him and he stumbles. Tears are coursing down his cheeks as he gulps in oxygen and spits it out, a wicked spur jabbing his diaphragm. The present reasserts itself. Faces bear down on him, immutable eyes hold his.
‘Jogged your memory?’ Blue says. Owen gabbles, unable to latch onto any words. He works his mouth for a moment but all he manages is some more gibberish. Blue slips a hanky from his trouser pocket and unfolds it carefully. He makes much of blotting his brow and wiping his hands on it. After he has tucked it away he rubs his palms, once, twice, on his trouser legs.
Then, ‘You tell Sean that bright people don’t miss appointments with Blue. You tell him we’ll be back, and so will he with the money, or else. You tell him no one ever cheats me and gets away with it.’ His tone is sugary as candyfloss one instant, the screechy discord of a stuck pig the next. He pats his butterscotch curls into place, momentarily glimpsing his reflection in the mirrored counter. Then, carefully, he examines his fingernails, head tilted ruminatively.
‘I’ve broken a nail. Damn!’ he mutters, peeved. ‘You make sure that you pass on my message, all right, sonny?’
Owen nods dumbly. He has begun trembling with shock. And then they are making their way towards the stairs, Blue taking them two at a time. Eyes of neighbouring stallholders are averted. They know Blue by reputation and that is sufficient impetus to ensure that they do not get involved. It takes several minutes for Owen to gather his wits and think coherently. He swipes the tears from his face and counts his breathing in and out, until his heartbeat calms. Then, working through the pain that radiates from his core, the pain that makes every inhalation slew through him, he begins methodically packing up the stall. The music jangles and bumps, the lights strike his eyes like paper pellets, as he goes about determinedly filling cardboard boxes and tidying them into the under-counter cupboard. His camel’s back is broken. Not another straw will it take. He will leave the keys in the flat and go – now. If this means that he is running away, that he is taking the coward’s route, so be it. He has one aim fuelled by terror, to escape London, to get far away from Blue and his cronies, from Naomi, Sean and this rat-hole of a market. He padlocks the stall doors, his eyes sweeping over the scintillating maze one last time. Then, he turns towards the sunlit stairs.
‘Owen, you must come quickly. There’s a call from Sean’s wife. She’s asking for you.’ Spinning round, he comes face to face with Cat, short for Catalina. She is a tall, dark-haired Hispanic woman with the stall nearest the toilets. ‘She’s hysterical. I think it may be something to do with their baby.’ And then he is racing down the aisles, dodging customers, heads turning in his direction. Finding his way across the jostling market to the telephone, he feels like a pinball hitting one obstacle after another.
‘Here, watch your step!’ someone yells after him. And another of the punters swears and makes an obscene gesture at his retreating back.
‘For fuck’s sake, who do you think you are, pushing me out of the way?’ Owen has a fleeting impression of a luminous pink miniskirt, a sequinned top and large eyes outlined with kohl. ‘Bastard!’ she screams after him. Cat ushers him through the swing doors and into a concrete cell. With a jut of her chin she indicates the ’phone dangling from its cord.
‘If you need me, holler,’ she tells him and vanishes. Four narrow toilet cubicles line one wall. Opposite them is a basin, and set a few feet beyond it, the payphone. He steps up to it, and warily picks up the receiver as though he is drawing a primed gun from its holster.
‘Catherine, Catherine it’s Owen. What’s the—’ But she interrupts him with a rush of hysterical words that he struggles to follow. ‘Who has taken her? Who has taken Bria?’ But he knows, he knows who has her. And in that moment he knows, too, that her life is imperilled.
He listens to a repeat of the previous night’s narrative told from another perspective, that of a parent in fear for her baby’s life. A volley of words, the smell of uric acid hitting the back of his throat, and the name, Mara. A friend, a pregnant woman she met at the rec. Catherine was going to go to her parents. Sean told her to. But in the end she couldn’t face it. And now . . . The floor and walls seem to shudder to the muffled beat of the music, an interminable drum roll. Only this story has a new chapter to it, one where Mara goes back to Catherine’s house, and they talk. And she is so nice, so kind that she trusts her implicitly. She says Catherine should have a rest, that she will mind Bria for her while she sleeps. And she is tired, very tired, and the caring eyes keep reassuring her till she assents. Mara is downstairs with her baby. She can hear her singing a lullaby. And she falls asleep. God forgive her, she falls asleep. And when she awakes, Bria has disappeared. The woman has taken her, taken her baby. A razor-edged silence comes then, like the poise of a guillotine blade seconds before it falls. The beat blunders on. Then suddenly Catherine’s curdling screams leap from the receiver into the squalid surroundings.
‘Listen to me, Catherine. I know who has Bria,’ he tells her firmly, his eyes on a metal mesh bin in the corner of the room where blood is slowly soaking through a shiny white sanitary bag.
‘Where is she? Where is my baby, Owen? Where? Tell me where to find her!’
He is visited by a second of fright. He drops the phone, follows it swinging from its cord, casting a shadow that crawls over the concrete floor and walls. ‘Owen, Owen,’ comes the muted tinny shriek, as if travelling universes to find him. He forces himself to take hold of it again. He tries to speak but his lips refuse to respond. The door gapes open with a slap of cooler air. A big man with a shaved head, and a raised milky-green scar meandering lizard-like across one cheek, stands stolidly taking in the tableau that greets him. The look in his close-set ash-grey eyes is blasé as they jerk away from him. He steps into one of the cubicles, and seconds later Owen hears his stream of piss striking the enamel toilet bowl.
The words come unstuck at last. ‘Mara is really Naomi, Catherine. It’s Naomi. She has your baby. She has Bria.’
‘Naomi? Why would she—’ A pause as one thought leads to another. Then, ‘Where? Where? Where, Owen?’ Catherine’s voice is a heavy boot striking him, making him flinch with pain. The man lumbers out of the stall, doing up his flies. He gives a knowing sneer, then without comment he melts back into the market. ‘Where?’ she echoes again, her tone altered now, hollow and pitiable. ‘Tell me where? Please?’
‘I don’t know for sure. Maybe the flat in Covent Garden. She won’t harm her. I promise you. She’ll be looking after her. I can’t explain now but you have to believe me. You haven’t told anyone else, have you, Catherine?’ He has visions of police cars surrounding the Hounslow terrace, of it all escalating rapidly. And if Naomi feels trapped, cornered . . .
‘No. You’re the only one. I don’t know where Sean is. I haven’t rung my parents. I wanted to speak to you first.’
‘Don’t alert the police yet, Catherine. It’s very important. You stay where you are. I’m going to find Bria now. And I’m going to bring her home, safe and well. I’ll ring as soon as I have news. Wait by the phone.’
Catherine’s voice is light as goose down. ‘Bring her back!’ she begs. ‘Bring her back, Owen!’ And all at once he is transported down the ladder of years to a bar of golden windswept sand. He is staring down at Sarah. Her skin is misty blue, like the wings of advancing night staining a blanket of snow. There is grit in her dripping curls, tiny bits of shining grit. Her eyes are shut, the heavy lids shaded purplish-grey. Her lips are slightly open so that Owen can see her tiny front teeth. His father is standing in his sodden, wrinkled clothes, his big hands at his sides fumbling in the air. Sunlight slaps his balding wet scalp, making it gleam. Salty sea tears scroll down his cheeks and mingle with his own. His mother is kneeling by the side of Sarah’s body, clutching her withered starfish hand. She lifts her head. Her eyes lock with her husband’s, his father’s.
‘Bring her back!’ she hisses. ‘Bring her back!’ The present reclaims him. In it another child is lost and another mother hisses, ‘Bring her back!’
‘I’ll bring her back,’ he tells Catherine. ‘I’ll call the moment I have news.’
He hangs up, flicks his face with water from the corner basin, and rushes out. It seems wholly inappropriate that it is such a beautiful day, that the Londoners he shoulders past have sunflower faces upturned to the skies. They are clothed in gay cotton prints, sit at street cafés letting the hours slip through their fingers, while he strives to bring back a missing baby. His hand is shaking as he opens the door that fronts onto the street. When, gasping for breath, he reaches the third floor, he has the key at the ready. The flat door is locked from the inside.
‘Naomi? Naomi? It’s me, Owen.’ With a closed fist he raps smartly. ‘Come on, Naomi, let me in.’ He is an actor giving the performance of his life, his tone amicable, easygoing. He puts his ear against the wood and listens for the sounds of a baby. Nothing. Then Naomi’s voice returns to him.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he attests jovially. ‘I’m by myself.’ With relief he hears the bolt being slid back, and the door edges open a few inches. She has been crying. The whites of her eyes are a watery pink. Her mascara has run, staining her face with sooty streaks. Both of her eyelids are shadowed with black. Her scruffy hair is tangled. She is wearing yet another smock dress, a busy viscose print with a fussy lace collar. Her cushion belly is being flattened in the narrow crack.
‘May I come in?’ he asks quietly. She cranes her neck and peers beyond him. He shakes his head. ‘It’s just me, Naomi.’ She snivels and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Briefly she locks eyes with him, as if checking for traces of a lie behind his contracting pupils. At last she stands back, letting the door swing open. He steps through, and instantly she slams it behind him, relocks it. She shuffles past him. Both bedroom doors are ajar and he scans them hastily, searching for Bria. But he sees no evidence of her. Emerging through the bead curtain, he finds the lounge flooded with brutal light. From the street below comes the usual road rumble. Nothing is amiss. All the furniture is as he left it this morning. There is no addition to it – no baby.
‘I am very tired,’ Naomi mutters dazedly, sinking down onto the settee. Again she rubs at her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I need to sleep now.’ Unconsciously she pats her dented cushion womb. Owen crouches down and rests a hand on her bent knees. For a moment she stares blankly at it, then looks up, finding his face.
‘Naomi, where’s the baby?’ With protracted blinks she closes her eyes.
‘The baby?’ she mimics in mild puzzlement.
‘Yes, the baby. Bria. What have you done with the baby?’ He intones this cordially, as if he is asking the whereabouts of a lost coat, or a pair of shoes.
‘Oh, the baby’s dead,’ she breathes, smiling, happy to be of assistance. She leans her head to one side, her eyes now wide and staring. She gives an expansive sigh, yawns and picks at her scalp with her stubby fingers. ‘I had to get rid of it. My baby’s dead.’ She leans closer to him. ‘Come to bed, Owen.’
‘Where’s Bria, Naomi?’ She is wearing grey leggings and no shoes. He notices red pumps peeping out from under the fringe of throws. She worries at a tiny hole on her peaked knees. Her brow puckers into its one crooked frown line.
‘But it’s all right because I got another one. Bria. Bria. It’s a nice name, isn’t it?’ she says to herself. ‘Now we can be a family, Owen. A proper family. I’ll be Mother. You’ll be Father. And Bria will be Baby.’
Fleetingly he thinks of Catherine, Bria’s true mother, staring at the ’phone. And he thinks of Sean, her father, God knows where, doing God knows what. He lifts his voice a notch. ‘That’s right, Naomi. So where is our baby? Where is Bria?’ Now she is trying to push the tip of her little finger through the hole. ‘Listen to me. She’s very small. She needs looking after. Her mother is so worried about her. And that’s why you have to tell me where she is. So that I can take her home.’
Her vacant eyes find his. ‘I’m the Mother,’ she says. ‘This is our home.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Impatience colours his timbre and he takes a beat to control his rising pitch. ‘So tell me where you left her, where you left our baby.’
She seems to consider this carefully, her hands palpating her feather-filled belly unconsciously. Then her racoon eyes suddenly cloud over. ‘I was very sad,’ she says under her breath. ‘But no one cared about me, no one listened to me. They put me in the coal cupboard and it was very dark and dirty in there.’
Owen’s stomach suddenly cramps and it dawns on him that he has eaten nothing all day. It feels tender too, the flesh bruised and sore. He scrapes back his hair, frustration and a sickening consternation warring inside him. ‘Where is Bria?’ She stares at him, a stubborn adolescent. In the silence that ensues he becomes aware of the lisping of the leaking bath taps, a sound he has grown so accustomed to that it takes a minute for it to register on his sense of hearing. Then, listlessly, Naomi straightens up and indicates the bead curtain with a nod of her head. ‘Bria is in the bath, Owen. I put her in the bath,’ she says angelically. ‘She was bad, very bad, and she wouldn’t stop crying, so I put her in the bath to make her all cool and quiet again.’
He climbs to his feet unsteadily, feeling as if he has no skeleton to prop him up. His hands cover his mouth. He turns back to Naomi. She is staring fixedly at the wall, at the lopsided Jimi Hendrix poster, her mouth moving in a haunting rhyme. His hands fall away. ‘Dear God, Naomi, what have you done?’ But she makes no reply. He moves like a machine through the clicking beads, hesitating before the closed bathroom door. He feels the paralysing horror of the small boy on the beach, the overriding impulse to run. With a man’s courage he pushes down on the handle of the door and nudges it open. He sees the toilet, the basin, the small cabinet hanging above it, the mirrored front cracked, the bath. There is a green blanket in the bath, a sodden blanket lying in thick folds. The taps are dribbling, slowly filling the tub.
He steps to the bath’s edge and forces himself to look down. He is holding his breath as he leans over. His spread fingers start exploring the fat pleats of woolly fabric, pockets of water trapped like miniature rock pools within it. Now he is patting it carefully, his hands travelling swiftly across its rugged landscape. He touches something satiny as soap, a tiny foot. He scrabbles at the drenched shroud, peeling back the heavy layers to reveal a baby. Bria. She is lying on her back in inches of icy water. She is lifeless, her skin waxen, her lips a bluish hue. With a light touch he probes the small torso, dares to lay the flat of his hand against the saturated pink baby-grow. Through the towelling material he feels a flyaway tick, the rapid tremble of a heartbeat. She is alive! He slips his hand under the baby’s body, cups her head and carefully lifts her up. Hugging her close, he hurries to his bedroom.
Bria’s head falls on his shoulder and the ghost of a whimper escapes her mouth. There is a bib still tied at her neck, with a nursery-rhyme cow leaping a golden bracket of moon. It is blotted with the watery yellow of infant bile. Her eyes are shut fast, her fine hair is plastered to her head, and she is icy as death. He lays her on the bed and strips the clothes from her. Last is her nappy, laden with water. He rummages in the wardrobe and pulls out a navy cotton sweatshirt. Somewhere he has read that the most efficient way to restore heat to a baby is to hold it next to your own skin. He rips off his T-shirt, enveloping her with the heat of his own body. ‘Bria . . . Bria . . . come back,’ he whispers, clasping her close, willing life back into her, gently rubbing the tiny limbs to restore the circulation. When at last he feels her stir he lays her on the bed, and swaddles her in the sweatshirt. Supporting her in the arc of his bent arm, he sees her eyes start, then the lids droop again. He is going to ring Catherine, but as he emerges from his bedroom, Naomi appears in the beaded doorway, barring his way.
‘Where are you going, Owen?’
He daren’t risk Bria’s life further by delaying with this mad woman another second. He steps to the flat door, slides the bolt and opens it.
Naomi’s head lolls to one side. Her hair is virtually black now. Her lapidary eyes are unfocused. ‘Owen?’
‘Out. I’m going out.’
‘Are you taking our baby?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t be long.’ As he descends the stairs he hears her call after him, ‘Because we’re a family now. We have to stay together, no matter what.’
***
Catherine has stared at the ’phone so long now, that like a word uttered over and over, it has grown surreal, an unfamiliar object. It feels as if time has slowed to a standstill. She sits in the husk of a house that is not a home. She has put all her faith in a man she has only met once. She does not know why. Her baby’s life depends on him, and him alone. She should have rung her parents, contacted the police. And yet something compelled her to turn to Owen, to charge him with bringing her back. Bria is dead, her reason tells her so. Her baby is dead. She must accept this. But her heart prays, please, please.
She gazes round the hall, her senses heightened. The front door is painted yellow, mustard yellow. Beneath this epidermis lie many other shades, she is sure, past lives layered one over the other. The walls are papered, a pattern of cream lozenges on brown lozenges on beige lozenges. Looking at it makes her feel woozy. The floor is lino, muddy green hexagons. The early evening light is unkind to the ill-used house. It exposes the pram, the empty pram in all its hopelessness. This morning it had a baby in it. This evening it is empty.
Catherine knows about death. She knows you may be larking in the snow one minute, and being sucked under the ice the next. She knows that it has a small voice, small but determined. Death is easy. Death is a slip. It trips you up when you least expect it. She thought it didn’t matter, that none of it mattered. The dreadful days she has slogged through made her pine to be back in the ice, to let it have her. She felt the clamp of the frozen jaws and welcomed it. She thought there was nothing much worth salvaging in her life. Then Bria came.
And so she waits poised on the edge of a second, knowing she may fall either way. Her hearing is sensitive. Voices slur through bricks and mortar, music pounds, traffic keeps up a dreary debate, a bus’s brakes grind and wheeze, a horn sounds, engines turn over like cement mixers. Then one slows approaching number 17, stops, a door slams, footsteps approach. She has the sudden insane desire to drop to the lino floor, clasp her hands over her head, to take cover before the bomb blast. Knocking. Someone has come knocking at her door.
‘Catherine? Catherine?’ More knocks. ‘It’s Owen. I’ve got Bria. I’ve . . . I’ve brought her back. I’ve brought her back, Catherine.’ She is not sure if she can get up, if her legs will support her. ‘Catherine? She’s okay. Catherine?’
She climbs to her feet in increments, like a frail old woman, and feels her way along the wall, leans into it, lets it press the kinks out of her. She rolls onto the door, presses her face up to the frosted glass panel set in its top half. She can see him on the other side of it, his features glimpsed through the pane of ice. Fair hair, blue eyes, red hair, green eyes, undulate. He stoops so that he is level with her. Their lips would be touching but for the glass. She stares at her reflection in him, and he stares back at his, in her, Water Children, kindred spirits. A mother who has lost her child. A child who has lost his mother. They surface and breathe in unison. In the division of a second, something comes of nothing. And the splinter of ice lodged in both their hearts begins to melt.
‘Catherine, it’s all right. You can open the door.’ His lips brush the pane as he speaks. He waits. Bria squirms in his arms. She is warm now and hungry. Catherine thinks, I am going to faint. But she doesn’t. She lays her hand on the door knob, turns it and pulls. The door judders open. Arms that are not hers levitate by themselves, they rise and reach. And the breath snags in her throat so that she keeps having to tear it out of her. He puts the baby in the arms that are not hers, and the breath rips, and the cry comes.
‘Ah! Bria!’
Later, he thinks about the paradox, that the baby held her, and not the other way round. He sees the buttercup light that spilled into the hall as she opened the door, sees it giving her red hair the lustre of gold. He thinks about her dreamy green eyes, their soft setting of light-brown lashes and brows. He recalls the way his body relaxed as he watched her ministering to her baby. He had not known that he was all angles and ridges until then. They communicated in broken sentences, a phrase, a gesture, a dialogue of action. She rang her father and told him that she was worried that Bria was ill. He came to collect them, and said he would take her to the doctor. She agreed to stay with them for the time being. Before Owen left she took his hand and held it a long moment, then she gave him her parents’ telephone number.
Heading back into London, he thinks about the leaking tap, how the water was rising speedily, how little time there was left. He thinks about how easy it is to drown, how a little girl on a sunny day can wander into the blue of the sea, and be snatched and dragged to her death in seconds. For a time he strolls the city streets. He watches young women in bright summer cottons laughing and chattering, tossing their heads, linking their arms, running for a bus, climbing into a cab, pedalling a bike. What would Sarah be like now? What kind of a woman would she have grown into? He did not realize that the pang of missing someone you never knew could be so acute. Would they have argued, joked, teased, laughed? Would they have had nicknames for each other? Would she have leant on him and he on her? Would entwined stretches of their lives have been like a three-legged race? Would her brother have meant as much to her, as her absence meant to him? He does not go back to the flat. He boards another train, overground. He is journeying west, his destination North Devon, an outing to the seaside. He is on a pilgrimage to Saunton Sands, to revisit the sea that took his sister. He is going to turn back the pages of his life and bookmark his last day spent with Sarah.