The Bluebird Café (16 page)

‘Witnesser, I mean. To sign with us.'

‘Oh. I haven't ever been to a wedding yet … Could I ask Paul and Lucy?'

‘Everyone loves a wedding. Come on, let's celebrate. Where's that thermos?' She grabbed the bag and unzipped its side pocket, it grinned back at her with white plastic teeth. ‘Here. I brought these to sit on.' Out came two neatly folded plastic carriers. Gilbert's said ‘I'm A Happy Shopper', Mavis just had a Lloyd's Chemist one. They unpacked the picnic and got comfy, leaning against the mossy old stone behind them, where six feet under was Lily Runnic (1925–1965), resting in peace.

Smells. Lucy was surrounded by them, overcome by them. She hadn't realised before what a smelly place Southampton was. Ugh. The smell of the fake-fur collar on the tartan jacket that Gilbert had taken to wearing. Grease-clogged nylon. A man came into the café and Lucy knew that he'd had a boiled egg with Marmite soldiers and a drink of milk for breakfast. The smell of a customer's dirty hair. The smell of dirty tea towels. The smell of the mice and the Badger Centre. She could tell that Paul had cleaned out the newts that afternoon.

‘Paul. The smell of newts, or even worse, tadpoles, is the worst smell in the world,' she told him, but he was making himself a peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwich and she had to leave the room before he could reply. She pulled the neck of her sweatshirt up over her nose and breathed through that. She wished that Abigail was there to do the frying. She bought some cologne tissues at the chemist so that she could carry one balled-up in her hand and sniff it when necessary. If this carried on, she decided, they'd definitely have to quit the Bluebird, or serve nothing but very, very weak peppermint tea, melon, and lavender sorbet.

It must be a cook's ennui, Lucy decided. A special nausea that a person would get if they'd cooked too many hot dinners. Then she noticed that her feet had a new splayed look, as though something had been dropped on them, or a cartoon steamroller had rolled over them. They were flatter and looser.

Paul, even Paul, noticed that she looked tired. She had huge panda circles around her eyes. Her wrists ached. Her lips were chapped. The words were in her mouth.

‘Paul. I think I might be pregnant.' She didn't say them because she couldn't believe it might be true, and didn't know what she would feel, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she might be VERY PLEASED. She decided to do a test and then tell Paul if it was Yes, and perhaps if it was No.

The Boots Home Pregnancy Test Kit, £7.95, was in her bag – bulging, she joked to herself, a surely unmistakable bulge – when they looked around Bluebell Cottage.

‘Lots of plants are original,' Paul told her. ‘Nineteen twenties. The bulbs have naturalised. I saw it last spring, all blues and yellows, scilla, real daffodils, and bluebells of course.' The gardens were surrounded by a thick hawthorn hedge and a ditch. There were front and back gates with little bridges.

‘Ha ha – a ditch!' said Lucy. ‘I'd have to make that joke to myself every time I went out. I wonder if it will flood.'

‘No, silly. Too high up,' said Paul.

‘Oh. I never really think of Southampton as having hills.'

‘There would have been deer here once,' Paul said. ‘There's a badger sett not far off too. We could go and watch at night.'

‘What's this?' asked Lucy. It was an unusual tree. ‘Is it native?'

‘It's a wychelm.'

‘Oh, Paul! Really?'

She looked for pig's teeth. There weren't any, but even better, there was a walnut tree with a swing.

‘We could put a hammock up too,' said Paul, ‘and get some more deckchairs.'

‘I'll make pickled walnuts. We'll be self-sufficient in them. Let's go inside.' There was a black iron boot scraper and a bell pull.

‘Mr Badger, I presume,' said Lucy.

‘What?'

There was a porch with shelves for geraniums and a place for Wellingtons and spiders. The door was heavy. There was a brass knocker, a woodpecker. A pokerwork sign said ‘Bluebell Cottage'.

‘Do you think that's naff?' she asked Paul.

‘Sort of, I don't know. You'll have to ask Abigail,' Paul replied.

‘Well, I hardly think that someone in love with someone who wears sports sandals can be the arbiter of good taste.'

‘I suppose not.' Paul unlocked the door with a very ordinary Yale key. Inside everything seemed pale yellow. It made Lucy think of retsina, or a yellowish Chardonnay. All of the woodwork was painted yellow. The floors were all bare boards and had once been polished; they would be again.

‘There is gas,' said Paul, ‘but it has to be serviced, and probably all replaced, but that's a landlord's legal duty. It comes unfurnished. Apart from this–' he tapped a hatstand ‘– and there's a table in the kitchen.'

‘Could we have real fires?'

‘Once the chimneys have been swept. Wouldn't you mind living on the Common? You couldn't go anywhere on your own after dusk.'

‘Where is there to go? I never go anywhere anyway. And it's only a few yards from a road.'

‘Cemetery Road.'

‘Well, that's a gay pick-up place so I'd be all right. We could always move again if it was too spooky or something …'

‘What about your café?' Paul asked her. ‘You know I can still do the job without taking over the cottage. They'd be paying me more too.'

‘Oh, let's forget the café, ditch the café. There's only two more months to go on the lease anyway. Now's a good time to quit. Quit while you're breaking even, isn't that what they say? And something might happen. I might do more for the
News
or get another job or something. The cafe's no fun now that Abi's gone.'

‘You'll miss her, won't you?'

‘I haven't got anyone to be friends with now.'

Lucy didn't know that there was a whole new raft of friends waiting for her a few months away. Friends to go to Aquanatal with, to float beside, their arms entwined in buoyant, bendy, pastel-coloured poles, friends who would keep each other afloat, who would pass around bootleg copies of a recently published study on Squash-Drinking Syndrome in Under-Fives, friends to meet by the duck pond, all carrying unnecessarily huge changing bags and endless supplies of bread-sticks and baby wipes, friends who would tell each other they were looking really slim (or really tired, cream-crackered, saying ‘Have you had an awful night?'). Friends who all carried spotless white muslin squares from John Lewis. Lucy would want to send Paul out to buy some. She hadn't known how indispensable they were.

Pretty dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight that were sliding through the sitting-room windows.

‘I used to think that they were bits of gravity,' said Lucy, ‘and
that the sun's rays were ladders for angels. It's really warm. I was expecting it to be cold, and you said damp.'

The kitchen seemed cold though.

‘We can paint it, and once we've got the oven on … and it might be sunny in here in the mornings.'

There was a proper larder with marble shelves and a pointed wooden door. The cracked grey lino ran out a foot short of the back of the larder, revealing dusty red tiles.

‘Quarry tiles! We can be on
Home Front!'

Upstairs was a bathroom with a huge enamel bath full of spider webs, and a sink with coppery trails under the taps. The loo had a hateful brown plastic seat.

‘We'll change the seat and bleach everything. It'll be fine,' said Lucy.

‘There isn't a shower.'

‘I don't mind.'

There were two bedrooms, one was really tiny.

‘There wouldn't be much space for people to come and stay,' said Lucy.

‘Good.'

The smell of emptiness and some dead flies on the windowsill made Lucy feel sick again. She opened the window and breathed in great draughts of the sweet woody air. They could see a section of one of the paths that circled the lake. Birds were singing. A pair of dog walkers strolled past, swinging their leads, dogs nowhere, then came a boy on a bike, then a jogger.

‘I think it's quite busy here actually,' said Lucy.

Paul and Lucy locked up Bluebell Cottage and set off back across the Common towards the café.

‘I do love it, Paul. I mean, I would love to live there. I'm sick of the mean streets of Southampton. It's so dirty around the café. I know every crack in those dirty sidewalks … Really, we should think of moving right out into the Forest, or the real countryside.' Lucy had never been quite convinced by the New Forest's claims to be an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was too accessible and reminded her of childhood walks across some of Surrey's finest golf courses. You always seemed to be within a
Hawkshead
catalogue's throw of a Renault Espace. ‘Would you like that, Paul?' she asked. He looked surprised.

‘Yes.'

They were almost at the Badger Centre now.

‘I just need to check some new sea anemones …'

‘Paul! Oh, OK. I'll wait outside.' The smell would be too much. Lucy sat on a bench beside a bright green frog litter bin. She patted its warm plastic head and considered kissing it. Paul came out carrying a very small fishing net.

‘They need cleaning out again. I'd better stay. Do you mind? You can come in.'

‘Oh, I'll just go home. I've got things to do.' She could do the test on her own and think about the results, and telling Paul.

A blue line appeared on the little white tile. Lucy smiled at
herself in the mirror. What to do now? The luxury of quiet contemplation, the excitement of having a real secret.

She made a salad of nasturtium flowers and watercress and took some of her best rolls out of the freezer, plus a brazil roulade. Thank God the café was closed. Then she had a bath and washed her hair and put on the dress she'd bought for Vicks' wedding. She checked the café lease. Two months left to go or a month's notice to give. They could sell the café stuff – tables, stove, chillers – and buy a pram or a cot or something. Perhaps the Badger Centre would buy some of the stuff. She'd ask Paul. And she could maybe start doing teas there, just really nice cakes and biscuits on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Mmm. She could make little biscuit animals and teasels and bees and things. She couldn't stop smiling.

Paul came in two and a half hours later. Could cleaning out the sea anemones really take that long? She didn't ask. He'd probably done the crayfish and the fish and the ants as well. He noticed her dress.

‘Are we going out?'

‘Not unless you want to.'

‘Looks nice.'

‘Thanks.' She'd intended to tell him over dinner. She couldn't wait and she still couldn't stop smiling, but how to pick the words, the best line of her life?

‘Paul, I think I am, I mean, I am, um … pregnant. I mean, having a baby.'

‘What? What?' He stepped backwards, shocked or backing away … ‘That's brilliant!' His long, thin, aquarium-smelling arms were around her. He was kissing her hair, breathing in its dark marigold sweetness.

‘Are you pleased?' she asked.

‘Yes. But when, how long have you known? I didn't really notice anything.'

‘Nine months, I suppose.' She counted on her fingers. ‘September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June! I don't know exactly when you start from.'

‘It's forty weeks, I think, Lucy, from the first day of your last period.' He could picture the table from A-level Biology, and how the human one had compared to a cat, rabbit and horses. Lucy was slightly taken aback when he said ‘period'. He didn't usually discuss hers.

‘Sit down, rest!' he said, propelling her towards the sofa.

‘I do feel sick all the time, and everything smells.'

‘I'll make you a cup of tea and some dinner.'

‘Really weak. I've made the dinner already.'

Paul went to make the tea, but kept looking at her all the time and smiling.

‘It's so lucky that we're both pleased,' she said.

‘Marry me, Lucy.'

‘Can we get some things sorted out first? I mean, sorry, yes, I will.'

They kissed.

‘I don't want to renew the lease on the café. Let's just go and live in Bluebell Cottage. If we sell some of the café stuff, I think we can end up even. And I've got some ideas for the Badger Centre. I want to do teas.'

‘You might have enough to do just with the baby. I think you should go to the doctor's tomorrow and get it all checked,' he said.

* * *

Lucy went to the doctor's. She was weighed (64.8 kilos), and was given a Pregnancy Pack, a blue vinyl folder with charts and notes and leaflets. Once the lunches were finished she bunked off from the Bluebird and walked into the city centre. She got her hair cut and bought some folic acid tablets and
Pregnancy and Birth
magazine. She drifted round Mothercare, looking at impossibly small clothes, and bought a catalogue. Everyone else seemed to be pushing pushchairs, the occupants of which were either cross or asleep, or chewing something, or swigging something lukewarm from a bottle. Hmm. But then Lucy's baby would never eat in its buggy, or cry in shops, or have a red face, or wear a stupid headband or anything with a slogan on.

It was the Bluebird's last week. They were moving out on Sunday.

‘I don't know if Gilbert and Mavis are having a honeymoon,' Lucy said. ‘A coach holiday might suit them. A
News
Readers' Club special excursion. Or one of those Couples Only Pay Upfront and Eat All You Want islands.'

‘What about us?' Paul asked her. ‘We could have a honeymoon if it wasn't too expensive.'

‘Not a couples resort. There'd be salad bars.' Lucy had a horror of self-service salad bars. So unhygienic. And dips. People who might double-dip. Ugh.