The Truth About Melody Browne (21 page)

Another memory:

Jane, sitting on her bed in Matty’s old room, cross-legged and fat, her hair in a plait and her feet in clogs.

The window open on to the street, letting in wafts of chip-fat smell and the banter of Cockney holidaymakers.

A fat ball of aquamarine wool at her feet.

The dog running up the stairs, clickclickclick against the wooden steps.

The morning sun landing in stripes across the far wall.

A radio being tuned in someone else’s room.

Her mother, smiling, glancing down at her fat belly and saying the words: ‘Mummy’s going to have a baby.’

Melody wondering, how can Mummy be having another baby when Daddy’s living in America? And then realising, without anyone grown up having to tell her, that Daddy wasn’t the father of Mummy’s baby. Ken was.

Jane’s baby was due in November. She got fat very quickly. All day long she ate bread and cheese and bananas, and she was sick, loudly, voluminously and frequently. The summer came and went, and by the time Melody went back to school in September her mother was the size of a house and had chopped off all her hair again into the square helmet shape.

Penny’s face did the strangest thing when she saw Melody’s mum for the first time that Wednesday morning. She blinked and then she blinked again, then her jaw slowly lowered and her eyebrows slowly lifted and her nostrils flared open until she looked like her whole face was trying to escape from her head.

‘Your mum’s having that hippy’s baby!’ she declared with glee in the corridor outside their classroom a moment later. ‘She’s having his fucking baby. That makes me want to be
sick
.’

Melody turned away towards the classroom door.

‘Don’t ignore me,’ hissed Penny. ‘I’m
talking to you
.’

‘Yes, well, I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘No,’ said Penny, looming over Melody like a vulture, ‘I don’t suppose you do. I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone if my mum was up the duff by some dirty old hippy.’

‘He’s
not dirty
,’ said Melody. ‘Why do you keep saying he’s dirty?’

‘Because he is. They all are, hippies. My mum said so.’

‘Yes, well, your mum doesn’t know anything about hippies. And anyway, Ken’s not a hippy. He’s a polickital ativist.’

‘Same thing,’ said Penny, ‘same thing. All dirty. All perverts. All fucking disgusting. Just think,’ her face broke into a terrible smile. ‘You’re going to have a little brother or sister who’s a hippy too. A dirty little hippy! Heh heh heh …’ Penny tailed off with a contented smile and pushed past her into the classroom.

Melody followed quietly behind, staring at Penny’s thick yellow plait and wishing more than anything that she could grab hold of it and pull it so hard that Penny’s ugly head rolled off her shoulders, out the door, down the corridor and straight onto the busy street outside.

‘What are you going to call your baby?’ Melody swung back and forth in the bamboo chair that hung from the ceiling in the front room.

Her mum looked up from a crossword and smiled at her, distractedly. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I haven’t really thought.’

‘How about Jonathan?’

‘That’s a nice name.’

‘Yes, or if it’s a girl, Rowena?’

‘Hmm …’

‘Or Bettina? Or Matilda?’

‘Wow,’ said her mum, ‘you have been thinking about it.’

‘Yes. I’ve thought of lots more girls’ names than boys’ names, though. They’re much easier to think of.’

‘Yes,’ said her mum, ‘that is true.’

‘Why did you call me Melody?’

‘Ah,’ her mother’s face softened for a moment. ‘We called you Melody because we thought that Ribblesdale was a bit rough around the edges and it needed something to soften it. We almost called you Emerald, for the same reason.’

‘Emerald?’

‘Yes, like the green stone.’

Melody paused for a moment, trying to imagine the other version of herself, the one that never existed, the one called Emerald. Emerald was exotic and exciting and had jet-black hair and a haughty demeanour. Emerald wouldn’t be picked on at school by a pig like Penny. Emerald would have Charlotte quaking in her boots. Emerald was
remarkable
.

‘Can we call her Emerald then,’ she said, ‘if she’s a girl?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. We’ll have to have a look at her and see what we think, won’t we? Only a certain sort of little girl could carry off a name like Emerald …’

Melody mulled this over. She stared at her mother’s burgeoning belly and decided that whoever was in there deserved a name like Emerald and that even if she didn’t look at first as if she’d be able to ‘carry it off’, the very fact of having such a name bestowed upon her would be enough to see her through anything.

‘What will the baby’s last name be?’ she asked.

Her mother paused and stared for a moment into the distance. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘good question. I suppose, since Ken and I aren’t married, the baby should have my name. My maiden name. Newsome.’

‘What’s Ken’s surname?’

‘Stone.’

Emerald Stone
. It was perfect.

‘So, where will we all sleep when the baby comes? Will you and the baby sleep with Ken? And Grace and Seth too?’

‘Oh, Melody, you and your questions, questions, questions. Do they never stop? I don’t know what’s going to happen, all right? I don’t even know what’s happening tomorrow, let alone next month.’

‘But, there’s no room for a cot in Matty’s room, so you’ll have to sleep somewhere else and …’

‘
Melody
! For God’s sake! Please!’

‘But –’

‘Argh!’ Her mother threw down her newspaper and pen. ‘Melody – there is not an answer for every question! I do not know what is going to happen! I do not know anything! I barely know what my own name is half the bloody time! Now please, be quiet and leave me alone.’

Melody closed her mouth, really hard, so that no more questions came tumbling out of it and let the bamboo chair spin her, very slowly, away from her mother.

Late in October when Melody was almost seven and her mother was fit to pop, Ken took her out for ice cream.

It was a strangely balmy day, a soft breeze being blown across the drear and deserted town from somewhere far away with white beaches and palm trees. Ken’s bike was broken and a man called Pablo was fixing it for him, so they walked the short distance together in a companionable silence. That was one of the best things about Ken – unlike most other adults, he didn’t think it was necessary to keep talking all the time. He waited until he had something interesting to say or to ask, and then he said it. Or mostly, he just let Melody do all the talking.

But today his silence seemed more pointed, like he was being quiet on purpose. He didn’t say anything until they were sitting down in their usual booth at Morelli’s, and then it seemed to take him a long time to say it.

‘So,’ he began, ‘your mum’s nearly ready to have the baby then?’

Melody nodded and nibbled on a biscuit wafer.

‘The baby in there is very big now, you know. If she had the baby now it would be big enough to cuddle.’

Melody nodded again.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it, when mums’ tummies get all big and fat like that? Looks quite strange, like a huge balloon!’

Melody giggled.

‘So, have you felt the baby moving yet?’

Melody looked at Ken to see if he was joking, but he wasn’t. ‘How could I do that? she said.

‘Like this,’ he said, cupping his hand to his own stomach. ‘When babies get as big as your mum’s baby, you can feel them moving around inside.’

‘No,’ Melody shook her head, ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

‘Oh, but it is. I used to feel Seth when he was in Grace’s tummy all the time. He used to kick me,’ he said, ‘and once I even saw the outline of a little foot through Grace’s skin.’

‘No!’ Melody looked at Ken in wonder.

‘Yes. Honestly. So, your mummy hasn’t let you feel the baby move then?’

Melody shook her head.

‘Well, babies move around the most when their mummies are sitting still, so tonight, when she’s relaxed and everything’s quiet, ask her if you can feel it.’

‘OK,’ said Melody, ‘but I don’t think she’ll let me.’

‘Why not?’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Just don’t think she will. Maybe she thinks I’ll hurt it.’

Ken laughed. ‘You can’t hurt a baby by feeling it moving.’

She shrugged again. ‘Well, you know that and I know that but Mum, well, she’s just a worrier, isn’t she?’

Ken smiled and patted her hair.

‘She is that,’ he said. ‘She certainly is that.’

Melody’s mum didn’t let her feel her bump that night.

‘No,’ she said, ‘the baby’s sleeping. I don’t want you to wake it up.’

She didn’t let her feel it the next night either.

‘No,’ she said, ‘the baby’s sleeping again. There’s nothing to feel.’

Thinking that this baby seemed to like a nap in the evenings, Melody asked again the following morning.

This time her mother smiled. ‘Why the sudden need to feel the baby?’ she asked.

Melody shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just want to.’

‘Well, I tell you what, this baby isn’t much of a wriggler, not like you were. You wriggled and kicked nearly twenty-four hours a day! But this one,’ she patted her big belly gently, ‘this one just seems to like lying around, contemplating its navel. But when I feel it kick, I’ll let you know. OK?’

Melody smiled and kissed her mum’s tummy. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘And you,’ she said, addressing the bump, ‘wake up!’

Her mum laughed then and the two of them walked to school slowly and contentedly.

The baby arrived the next day. No one was expecting it as the baby wasn’t due for another three weeks, but there she was, pink and fat and surprisingly alert for a newborn.

Ken had come to get Melody from school, in the middle of the day. She’d been pulled out of science; twenty-eight curious pairs of eyes followed her as she left the classroom.

‘She’s here!’ Ken had said, hopping around the corridor, grinning from ear to ear. ‘The baby’s here!’

They’d run home, the whole way, breathless and panting by the time they reached the house, but still taking the stairs up to Jane’s room two at a time.

Jane was sitting up in bed, wearing a voluminous nightgown and drinking a cup of tea. The baby, dressed in a pink babygro and knitted hat, was lying at the foot of the bed, staring at the ceiling and kicking its fat legs in the air.

‘Well,’ said Jane, smiling groggily, ‘what do you think?’

Melody stared at the corpulent creature on the bed and thought how different she looked from Emily when she’d first seen her. Emily had looked diaphanous, otherworldly, like a mystical creature from fairyland. This baby looked solid and fully formed. The baby caught Melody’s gaze and stared at her. Then the baby smiled and Melody knew then that something wasn’t right. But she didn’t say anything. Instead she smiled and stroked the baby’s soft brown hair and said, ‘I think she’s beautiful.’

‘Your mother,’ said Ken, perching on the side of the bed and stroking the baby’s foot, ‘is a
goddess
. Do you know why?’

Melody shook her head.

‘Well, just after she dropped you at school this morning, her waters broke and she
walked
all the way to the hospital, on her own, which is mad, but also quite spectacular. Then she pushed out this magnificent baby – all eleven pounds of her – had a cup of tea and came home! I have never known anything like it!’

Melody stared at the baby and then at her mother. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had said anything so complimentary about her mother, the last time her mother had looked so proud and so happy. She liked the idea of her mother being a goddess, a creature worthy of worship and respect. She liked the atmosphere in this room, the joy on Ken’s face, the enervating scent of new life, the way that new babies seemed to come along and temporarily clean the stains out of everything. So she smiled and she lay down on the bed next to her new sister and she kissed her cheek and tried to put the strange things she was feeling to the furthest corners of her mind.

‘Are we going to call her Emerald?’ she asked, even though she wasn’t sure that it actually suited the big doughy-faced baby on the bed.

Her mother smiled and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not Emerald. But close. It’s a precious stone. Can you guess what it is?’

‘Er, Diamond?’

‘No. Try again.’

‘Ruby? Sapphire?’

‘No – we’re going to call her Amber. Amber Rose Newsome. Do you like it?’

Melody glanced once more at her baby sister and considered it. It wasn’t quite as thrilling as Emerald Stone but it suited her better she thought. She nodded and kissed the baby’s cheek again and said, ‘Yes, I like it. I like it a lot.’