Go to Sleep (22 page)

‘Yeah, well.’ He takes another step back. ‘If you or the little fella ever need anything. I’ve got a new mobile now. I’ll text you the number. Anything. Right?’

I do not know what to say. My eyes are filling up and, anticipating a scene, James turns round now and starts to walk away. I watch him go. Joe seems hypnotised, following his progress down the road. Just as I’m about to shut the front door and go back upstairs, James stops dead and comes loping back down the road.

‘Rache. Are you
sure
youse two are okay?’

I manage to dig out a baffled laugh.

‘What? Yes! Of course we are.’

He just stands out there in the fine morning rain, staring at me. After a long beat he nods, once.

‘Okay.’ He doesn’t move at first, then, under his breath, says ‘okay’ again, walks back up Belvidere and this time he doesn’t look back.

Somewhere downstairs my phone is ringing. For fuck’s sake. I thought I turned it off after James went. As soon as Joe and I went back up, perhaps somehow calmed by his visit, he took his fill from me without grumbling and, after two sloppy, self-satisfied burps, fell fast asleep. And this time I did as Adele told me – I went straight back to bed myself. It feels like I’ve been asleep for a minute when the message tone shrieks out, once, twice, two sharp electric shocks to my psyche. I force my head up three centimetres to read the time on the bedside clock. A quarter to twelve. Outside the window the world has been spinning gaily for hours already, neither noticing nor caring that Joe and I had stepped off the carousel. Here, inside our cell, my head sways and pulses, aching with a dull despair.

I sit up and take in the chaos of the bedroom, testimony
to the madness of this and every other night; up and down, up and down the stairs, rocking my angry man from room to room. Out of the crib and on to the breast. Feed. Clean. Feed. Clean. I can plot it all out like some macabre tapestry. At one point I found I was looking down at myself from the ceiling, mocking my hollowed-out, puff-eyed face, smashed with exhaustion. I look at Joe, so still now. So blamelessly still and sleeping. I peer closer. His chest lies flat, barely rising at all, and again I find myself dreaming how life would be. If I could sleep. If I could only get some sleep. My fantasy is brief and faintly drawn; no more than the gentle stir of a passing breeze on a puddle, but it’s there nonetheless, lurking behind the scrim of my wakeful consciousness, waiting to be summoned.

The phone rings again. I lie down, ignore it. I begin to drift and it rings once more. This one gets through to me. Once I’ve processed the question – who needs to speak to me so urgently that they’ll call and call until I acquiesce? – it’s a matter of how and when I will drag myself up and out of bed and pad back down to the telephone. I place my palms flat down on the mattress and force myself up, the sudden rush of blood as I stand sickening me with a shocking and repulsive nausea.

Downstairs, I play back the tape. Only one of my callers has left me a message – Adele. There’s a moment’s delay before she speaks. In the immediate background I
can hear the sound of women chattering, which intensifies my sense of impending dread.

‘Oh, shit!’ she says. ‘Sorry, darlin’! Never will get used to these things. Listen. It’s myself. Adele. I’ve called round a couple of times. D’you think you can pop in and see us at some point? Nothing to worry about . . .’

Nothing to worry about! Why won’t she tell me, then? My mind is vaulting with histrionic worst-case scenarios. Is Joe anaemic? Worse perhaps – they found some critical disorder that right through pregnancy was never picked up on. His heart, maybe, or his lungs. His chest rarely seems to rise and fall as it should if he was breathing fully and properly. Or maybe, no . . . he’s suffered brain damage in labour. Oxygen starvation in his first few seconds, when it was just me and him on this very floor . . . him with the umbilical cord around his little neck. Oh my God –
that’s
why he doesn’t sleep! The poor kid is brain-damaged. I don’t listen to the end of Adele’s message.

‘Dad. Can you come round?’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Not sure, to be honest. Joe and I have to get up to the clinic kind of immediately.’

But by the time he arrives, the idea that there’s something seriously wrong with my baby turns in on itself and shifts the spotlight on to me. Of course. It’s me she wants to see, not Joe.

* * *

As we wait at the traffic lights, my heart sinks. Vicky is crossing. Her head is dipped into the buggy as she coos at Abigail. I’m shot through with envy. This woman does not have a care in the world. And I can’t look away. It’s as though I’m sending out radio waves to attract her attention. At the exact moment I snap out of it and go to busy myself with Joe, she spots me. Her face lights up. She is surprised and overjoyed to see me. She bounds towards the car, all smiles, but the lights change and Dad, oblivious, eases away. I don’t know how I must look to Vicky. Sorry, maybe. Stunned. Or possibly just a blank, vacant, whitewashed, sleep-starved shell of a human being. But something about my expression curbs her gaiety and she steps back out of the road, making a ‘phone me’ gesture with her fingers as we pass. I nod.

Dad’s phone has been bleeping. As soon as we pull up in the clinic’s car park, he has it out, scanning and speed reading his texts. I can’t help wondering when this self-professed Luddite became so technologically adroit. Even his phone is groovier than mine, one of those flat, sleek, touch screen contraptions. I let myself out with as little fuss as possible, then start unbuckling Joe’s car seat. Dad jerks his head up.

‘Just gimme two ticks.’

‘It’s fine, Dad. You wait here.’

‘I’ll take the baby.’

‘Stop flapping, Dad. We won’t be long.’

He looks grateful. His phone beeps again and he swoops to read it before he can correct himself.

‘Sorry. Just the department.’

I raise an eyebrow.

‘You two working things out?’

‘Maybe.’ He gives an embarrassed smile, puts down his phone. ‘It’s far from being my biggest priority at the moment.’

I lean back in and kiss him.

‘Well, it should be. Me and Joe are fine. Call her.’

I swoop up the car seat by its handle and haul myself and the baby inside. Adele is as chirpy as ever, cooing over Joe.

‘My word but you’re a stunner, so you are. Would you look at him, girls! God but you’re a beautiful boy –
and
you know it, do you not?’ There are even back handed compliments for me, too. ‘Well, now! Isn’t your mummy feeding you well? Aren’t you the chubby little fella, hey?’

And for all that Joe is gurgling and the mood seems light and easy, I’m keen to get right to the heart of the matter.

‘So, Adele. You called me in?’

‘I did indeed.’

‘If you want to check him over, let’s just be honest and get on with it, hey?’

She cranks an extra level of reassurance into her smile.

‘Rachel, honey, the bruises are a concern. You’d
want
us to be aware, and to be curious about something like
that, wouldn’t you? But you yourself are not on trial here.’

‘No?’

‘Absolutely not! This is for your own good as much as for Joe . . .’

‘Here we go . . .’

‘Look, love – it’s nothing. I simply need to ask you some very basic questions. The bruising is not consistent with a child being mistreated. But nonetheless . . .’

‘What?’

She lets out a long, exasperated sigh.

‘Could you just – and this is not a criticism, right? But just show me how you’re holding Joe. Particularly when you bath him and change his nappy.’

I squeeze an ironic face for her, inject some airy levity into my voice.

‘You’re serious?’

‘Well, no, it’s not an order. I just wonder whether, especially when Mummy’s a little stressed or sleep-starved . . .’

‘Whether I beat him?’

I’m surprised when she snaps at me.

‘Rachel! Now stop this! I’m trying to help you here.’ I take a step back, hang my head a little. She comes right over and hugs me. ‘And more than anything, I’m trying to help that gorgeous wee boy of yours.’

My head still down, I mutter an apology. She lifts my chin with a finger, smiles into my eyes. If she could peer
inside me she’d see me stall, then freeze, with the cold, hard shock of sheer confusion. I actually do not know whether I’m coming or going. Did I hurt Joe? No. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.

I strip him down, go through the motions of holding him as I would, show her what a terrible mother I am. The bruises have long faded now. Adele seems apologetic, caught out almost.

‘Is everything okay, darling?’

‘Better than ever,’ I chirp.

‘Truthfully?’ I nod. ‘Look at me, Rachel. I really can’t help you if you won’t be straight with me.’

I stand up and level with her.

‘Honestly. He’s a good, good baby. He slept like a dream last night.’

She gets up to face me.

‘Well, good. Good.’ We stand there like that for a minute, each trying to out-smile the other. Eventually, Adele turns back towards the waiting room. ‘Okay. If all is well, then, all is well!’

She laughs and holds the door open. I scoop up the car seat, force one more tight-lipped smile and step back out into the corridor.

I buzz Dad in through the front door and as soon as he bounds into the lobby, his nose bright red from the cold, I can see he’s pleased with himself over something.

‘Just chased some little scallywag outside.’

‘Oh? What was he doing?’

‘Just hanging around. Tell you, love – when you’ve lived around here as long as I have, knowing the wrong ’uns from the right ’uns comes to be second nature.’

I swallow a rising ire.

‘Right. I’m sure he meant no harm.’

‘No harm?’ His eyes go all wide and self-righteous. He lets out a little snort. ‘Fair enough.’

I feel like giving it to him, full on, but I manage to swallow it.

‘So? Joe’s debut on the high seas, eh?’

‘I’d say he’s more than ready. Aren’t you, little sea dog?’

We get Joe snuggled up in his buggy and he fixes his eyes on us as we lock up the flat and carry him downstairs at a fifty-degree angle. His little face seems excited, full of expectation.

It is bone-jarringly cold outside.

‘Jesus! They weren’t messing, were they? I reckon there’s snow in that sky.’

‘Might even last till Christmas, Radio Four reckons. You still want to walk it?’

‘Yeah, come on. Joe’s used to it. Soon warm up if we get a bit of a speed up.’

So we head off down Belvidere and cut down towards the river path where the wind stops us dead in our tracks. I make sure Joe’s fleece blanket is packed right around his neck. Dad slaps his gloved hands together. I feel like hugging him. He’s so
old
suddenly – so perishable.

‘I don’t know if the ferries will even run in this, you know!’

‘If you want to head back, just say the word.’

‘Never!’

And it’s not that bad, really, once we work up a decent head of steam. In no time at all we’re passing the deli on the dock, then the Arena, trundling over the footbridges and gangways of the Albert Dock. I get a weird, unearthly shudder as I pass the Tate once more. Was that really
me
?

The ferries are running fine, though they’ve long since ceased the trips to Seacombe, Egremont and Woodside.
Nowadays it’s more of a tourist route, the ‘Ferry Across The Mersey Experience’, complete with cheesy commentary and Merseybeat soundtrack. We chug out into the spume and Joe and I just stand there at the prow, watching the seagulls swoop and dive. I’m dragged from my reverie by the commentary over the tannoy – monks setting sail in the 1200s, Birkenhead Priory and eventually, inevitably, the Fab Four. Just hearing the word sends me reeling again.

‘
Social work? Darling! That’s . . . fab!
’

I turn to find Dad, my eyes flashing, spoiling for a fight again over his mystery ‘scallywag’ loiterer, but the sight that greets me knocks me flat. My father – my dapper little daddy in his fitted tweed coat and his cashmere muffler – is stood against the ferry’s railings, weeping gently. I park Joe inside between two rows of wooden benching and wedge a newspaper under the buggy’s wheels to make double sure, and I go to Dad. It’s only as I’m right on top of him that I twig today’s significance. Friday, 3 December 2010. Fifteen years since Mum died. I hang my head in sadness – and shame.

*

Later, warming our hands on mugs of hot chocolate back at the ferry terminal’s café, I try to gauge Dad’s mood. Without anything really happening out there on the tossing and turbulent river, without much being said, it
seems like we’ve crossed a divide. I feel close to the old man in a way that I haven’t since childhood. I want to hold him and make him better. But there are things that I
have
to know. Joe is sound asleep, of course – it’s daytime, and I’m wide awake – and somehow I feel that I want to broach the subject of his father with my father while his eyes and ears are closed. I wait and pause and hesitate and in the end I just sigh out loud and go for it.

‘So . . .’ How many confessionals start with that little softener, I wonder. ‘I’m thinking you’ll have guessed who his daddy is? Joe’s.’

Dad looks like he used to when he’d dozed off on the sunlounger in the garden, and I woke him up by jumping on him: a little stunned; a tiny bit cross.

‘
No.
’ He says it as though I’ve accused him of something bad, and seems to realise his mistake straight away. He forces a chuckle. ‘I mean, I was rather hoping you might enlighten us.’ Again, the pained look, quickly banished with a smile. ‘Let me in on the secret one day. But other than that? No. I haven’t the foggiest idea.’

He sits back, not even making the kind of eye contact that indicates he’s waiting for an answer. If he hadn’t begun self-consciously stirring his hot chocolate I’d have reckoned he really wasn’t that interested. But now there’s a little glance upwards and I swoop on the moment. It’s right. The timing is right.