Mother of Pearl (15 page)

‘There's something wrong,' she said.

‘Don't be silly,' he said, ‘everything's fine.'

She abdicated for a moment to his certainty, as she had done once before, holding fast to the picture of the holy family, even as her father approached.

‘Rita,' he said quietly.

She stared at him. Something
was
wrong.

‘Rita,' he said again, sharply, as if she wasn't paying enough attention.

‘What, what is it?'

‘It's the baby … she's gone.'

‘Gone, what do you mean gone. Dead?'

An image of the baby trapped in her glass bowl passed in front of her. And then she indulged the notion of the baby not being in this picture. It was not wholly unpleasant, this wicked thought. The past months miraculously unravelled, the clock wound back, their coupling undone, her life before, intact. But it wouldn't hold, this vision of the past. Too much had happened. Too much.

‘Somebody's taken her.'

Why is he talking in riddles, she wondered. If the baby is dead, why doesn't he say so?

‘Taken her. What do you mean,
taken
her?'

Her voice came out as a shriek. Its shrill echo rebounded back at her in the colonnaded hallway. Dr Munroe stepped forward.

‘I'm so sorry, Mrs Spain,' he said, grasping her at the wrist and elbow as if to restrain her. (Some kind of status was being conferred on her after the event. Dr Munroe had always called her Rita.)

‘Nurse Matthews left the nursery for two minutes after the feed. Just two minutes,' he insisted contritely, appealing directly to her father. He refused to meet her gaze. ‘Such a thing has never happened before. Some woman, they say.'

He wrung his hands absently.

‘Some desperate woman.'

She should never have let them take the baby away from her. That was her first mistake. No, she corrected herself, she should never have let that tinker woman touch her;
that
was her first mistake. They had come, as she knew they would, they had come and stolen her baby from her. If she had only held the baby, just once, maybe
that
would have broken the spell and unhinged the hold they had over her. Or if she had fed her from her own breast? If the baby hadn't been incarcerated in that tent. She should never have allowed that. No, no, she argued with herself, it went back further than that … But no matter how far back Rita went, she could not gainsay the terrible truth; that someone had wanted her baby more than she had.

 

FOR WEEKS GOLDEN'S
Boots and Shoes on Mecklenburgh Street was besieged. Neighbours crowded into the back kitchen where Rita sat, surrounded by small mounds of baby clothes which she sorted absentmindedly by colour and by type. They brought food; it was all they could think of doing. They had never eaten so well, Mel thought. Trays of sandwiches appeared from nowhere, a pot of stew bubbled on the stove. Blancmanges, trifles, bowls of jelly sat about the place unheeded. These were for Rita – to tempt her to eat, as if she were a picky child who had to be coaxed. Pots of tea were on the go all day. Damp tea towels sat on every chair. It was, he thought, like the aftermath of a wake, except there had been no death. A knock would come to the hall door and Mel would answer it. There would be a reporter slouched against the jamb.

‘Any news of Baby Spain?' A query accompanied by a chromium flash.

Mel found himself elected as the family spokesman. He got used to the click and whirr of cameras, the endless queries roared at him from the street.

‘Are you happy with the police investigation, Mr Spain?'

‘How is your wife bearing up, Mr Spain?'

‘Have you anything to say to the kidnapper?'

Mel found he had a gift for it, this loud, indelicate camaraderie. And it was
his
face which appeared on the front pages of the newspapers under declamatory headlines:
HEARTFELT PLEA BY FATHER OF SNATCH BABY; BABY SPAIN NEEDS HER MOTHER, SAYS KIDNAP DAD
. He liked the image it gave of him. The reporters ascribed to him words and statements that made him seem like a man of authority. He was suddenly at the centre of things, firm and capable, acting the part of the grieving father. In truth, he was not grieving. Mel believed at that stage that the loss of the baby was temporary, a brief suspension of normality. Some other mother had taken the wrong baby home, he told himself; after all, they all looked so much alike. He felt too much lazy goodwill about the world to believe that the taking of the baby was sinister or calculated. And he would never believe that she was dead. For years to come – even after Stella was born – he believed that one day his long lost son would return. (He thought of her still as John Francis.) He imagined opening the door one day to a fine young man, a sailor with a kit bag or in a soldier's uniform, who had been out adventuring in the world and had come back with tall tales to tell. In the meantime, he stood on the doorstep on Mecklenburgh Street and thought of Gary Cooper; he had seen enough of his movies to know how to simulate quiet dignity. And raising his hand, he could command silence from the assembled huddle of the press.

He kept the cuttings; he knew it was inappropriate and so he did it quietly, storing the newspapers in bundles under the stairs and when the spotlight faded, secretly clipping and filing all the stories in a shoebox. He hid it at the bottom of the wall of boxes of old stock which lined the hall in Mecklenburgh Street. He was keeping it for the baby, he told himself. And if he savoured some personal glory from having this illicit record, he justified it as proof that would be needed in the future, proof of his strength in a moment of great adversity.

Rita had become the baby in the tank. People drifted into view, large, blurred, indistinct. They spoke, but like goldfish mouthing through glass, she heard no words. She felt as if she were under water, a silent, green world of grief. Soon, soon she would rise to the surface, escorted by a spray of tiny bubbles and break the calm, thrashing and gasping, her first breath a great, agonised howl…

When, after several weeks, the neighbours withdrew with their bowls and plates, the reporters went back empty-handed to their offices, and the plain clothes detectives retreated with their unanswered questions, Rita's torpor gave way to a dogged determination.
She
knew where to look for her baby. The tinkers had taken her. One of their own had died and they had replaced her with Hazel Mary. (Rita whispered the name to herself to keep the baby alive, as proof that she had indeed carried a child and given birth.) She scoured the streets. Every Saturday morning she would go back to the market on Great Britain Street, sure that she would find the woman whose palm she had crossed with silver. It was this woman who had her baby. Mel would reluctantly accompany her.

‘She's not here, Rita,' he would say as they walked among the leavings, the tattered clothes, the battered pots. ‘We're not going to find her here.'

He held her hand; her air of distraction had made him tender. He was in awe of her desperation; he envied the extravagant expression of her loss.

‘Let's go home, now. You're only tormenting yourself.'

Sometimes she would acquiesce, wilting suddenly and allowing herself to be led away. But, more often, she would pull away from him and stride off on her own.

Once, on the way back from one of these expeditions, she spotted a tinker woman begging on the steps of St Xavier's. There was a baby swaddled in a blanket on her lap. Mel had to run to keep up with Rita who darted across the busy street and made for the woman. She scrutinised the woman's thick plait of hair, her leathery girth, her snaggle-toothed face, her ill-shod feet.

‘Give me my baby,' Rita commanded.

‘Ma'am?' The woman gaped at her, her eyes two brown pools of amazement.

‘You took her from me, give her back.' She tugged at the tinker's shawl. The woman, grasping at her skirts, struggled to rise.

‘Rita, please …' Mel tried to drag her away but she struggled against him. She was all elbows and rage. The woman's grip on her child tightened.

‘This is my first to live, ma'am,' she said quietly. ‘This is my treasure.' And turning, she scuttled away, peering anxiously behind her as she ran in case she might be followed. All the fight went out of Rita. She sank on the steps, sitting supplicant, defeated, those words ringing in her ears. My first to live.

That was when she decided. Hazel Mary was dead. The story of the kidnap had been a game, a way to save her from fearing the worst, that her baby had been dead all along. The creature in the tent had been an impostor; no wonder she hadn't loved it. Hazel Mary,
her
Hazel Mary had died at the moment of birth. That was why they had whisked her away. Mel and her father and Dr Munroe had concocted the story about the kidnapping. All that talk about reporters at the door asking about ransoms and rewards had all been part of an elaborate fabrication. First, they would tell her the baby had been taken, then, when she had got used to the idea, they would tell her the truth. A truth she had already tumbled to.

She went back to the hospital. In fact, she haunted the place, where so recently she had dreaded going. She paced the corridors of the maternity ward, halting at this bed, and then another, eyeing their occupants, peering at their babies. She followed the nurses, badgering them to tell her what they had done with her baby. She singled out Nurse Matthews, who had been on duty that day; she would definitely know, Rita decided.

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Spain. I'm
really
sorry. I was only gone for a few minutes. And she was doing so well, before …' She halted.

Rita heard the remorseful pause. Now, she willed her, now, tell me. She was doing so well before she died. But all Nurse Matthews said was: ‘If I could bring her back, believe me, I would.'

Finally, Dr Munroe took her aside. He showed her into his office. On the walls were charts of the human skeleton, the red veins and blue arteries like the complicated depiction of a railway junction. Dr Munroe did not sit down. He loped back and forth as if he were a prisoner on designated exercise, his hands sunk deep into the pockets of his coat. He was working himself up to it, Rita thought, gauging his every movement.

‘We think it would be better, Mrs Spain, if you stopped coming here,' he said, still pacing, his head sunk on his chest as if he were musing to himself. He stopped.

‘I'm sure the police are doing all they can.' He ran a hand distractedly through his straw-coloured hair. He paused and leaned over her.

‘You can be assured that your baby is being well cared for. Whoever has taken her means no harm to the child. Probably a mother who has lost a baby of her own.'

‘Show me,' Rita said, rising suddenly from her seat.

‘Show you what, Mrs Spain,' he replied evenly.

‘Show me what you've done with her. She's here. I know she's here. She's dead and no one will tell me.'

‘Mrs Spain, there is nothing I can show you. Your baby isn't here. Your baby is out there, somewhere. Somewhere else.'

A shallow grave, he thought grimly to himself.

She hunted through the bowels of the hospital. The basement was a series of large, empty rooms, reached by a clattery service lift. Along the dim corridors were grey metal lockers and large cages of laundry. There were tall, slim cylinders with gauges attached, their red needles registered at nought. She could hear the sound of an engine running somewhere outside. She pushed open a large metal door and found herself in a small, enclosed yard. At the far end of it was a shed. She ventured closer. From the doorway she could make out the figure of an overalled man labouring in the gloom. He opened a hatch in the darkness. A square of leaping flames shot up illuminating the dim interior. He dumped something into it, a bag containing something soft and pulpy. The fire flared at his shoulder. He stoked it with a shovel, then turned to lift another bag up. His face was blackened, his hair singed, his eyes like pale moons in his sooty face, beads of sweat glistening on his grimy brow. Rita could smell burning flesh. She screamed.

‘What the …?' he yelled closing the iron grid at his back. It clanged dully, eclipsing the roar of the flames.

Rita fled. She had found what she was looking for. A glimpse of hell.

 

RITA HAD SEEN
the vengeful hand of God. He had sent her baby to the burning fires of hell right before her eyes. She was being punished. The sin of the mother had been visited upon the child. She had thought that when she had said ‘I do' at the altar in St Xavier's six months before that she had escaped his wrath. She remembered the pea-green light in the church and the soaring figures of the Trinity emblazoned in the stained-glass window in the nave. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The eye of God in the glass had looked down on her that day and had seemed forgiving. But it had only been a trick of the light. His eye was so high up she had had to crane her neck to see; it was, she saw now, black and solid, lofty and cruel. She studied that eye many times, gazing fixedly at it. He had but one, one all-seeing eye; the other was eclipsed by the shadow of what Rita thought was an eyelid. She came to see it as a malicious wink. What she didn't know was that there was a hole in the window of the nave. Years before, a boy from the Mansions had climbed a tree outside the church and once he had reached the height of God's shoulder he had used his catapult to fire a small stone through the glass. He aimed for the bull's eye. It had gone clean through; he had taken out the eye of God. That boy was Mel Spain.

Rita spent many hours in the church amidst the hissing sibilance of solitary prayer. She knelt in the front pew within earshot of the drone of absolution from the confessionals and waited for a sign. It was not devotion which brought her there. No amount of prayer, she knew, could save a soul from hell. Indulgences could win an unbaptised baby from limbo or the throngs of pagans who had never known the face of God, but hell, hell was final and absolute. She was turning to God or was it the devil – she remembered the custodian of the flames at the hospital – in a desperate attempt to ward off worse. She made a bargain. He could take Mel, she offered, eyeing the lofty nave, he could even take Mel, if she could have her baby back.