An hour later, Robert checked Louisa into a hotel, watching her runner’s legs stride the patterned carpet of the foyer as she telephoned her previous hotel and arranged to have her luggage sent to London. He didn’t think he should accompany her to her room but, as she was talking on her mobile and he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, he continued to walk by her side. He glanced at his watch. He wouldn’t be missed yet.
FIFTEEN
It’s cold; so cold that my baby and I have become one, wrapped up together in my dirty parka. I press her face into my neck and feel her tiny breaths on my skin. She smells milky and sweet, her eyes wide with wonder as we run. We’re running away, charging dangerously across the ice-glazed supermarket car park, escaping down the high street, pin-balling through the Saturday shopping crowds and down Holt’s Alley to a warren of terraced houses beyond. That should do it; keep them off my scent. I kiss my baby’s head through her little woollen hat.
‘Don’t worry, chickie. Mummy won’t let them catch us.’
I haven’t a clue where we’re going. But it’s been such a cold morning of effort, a winter-blue, throat-burning escape, that I’m now exhausted and need somewhere warm to settle and feed my baby. We head for the train station because I know there’s a café on platform two and a train would be a good thing to get on, to take us away.
I stop running and catch my breath in a brisk walk. I’m simply not capable of charging through town with the weight of my baby pressed to my front. I only gave birth a week ago and my insides still feel loose, my breasts way too heavy with milk to keep running, even though I know we have to if we are to survive this.
In the baby magazines, it said that new mums should take it easy and get friends and relatives to do the running around. Here I am, running, running and probably drawing more attention to myself by doing that anyway. I’m not going to let them catch me. She’s my baby. All mine now.
I have named her for her deep red lips. Ruby. Apparently, you forget quickly, about the birth – nature’s trick to ensure a repeat performance – but I can still remember every detail. What I’m finding hard to recall and put into order are the days that followed.
Mother and Father didn’t return from their New Year celebrations at Uncle Gustaw and Aunt Anna’s house until the sun had burst well above the horizon. I woke, perhaps from the rays touching my eyelids or perhaps from the merriment that haemorrhaged through the front door (New Year is the only time my mother is ever merry), and for a moment I forgot all about the night’s happenings.
It was only when I felt something wriggling in the crook of my body that I realised my baby wasn’t inside me any more. She had wormed her way down under the covers in an attempt to be back in my womb again or perhaps she was burrowing for my nipple. Instinctively, I drew her up to my breast where she knew exactly what to do and after a dozen agonizing sucks, my baby slept peacefully.
We have reached the train station. I have only been on a train twice before. Once when I was ten and we went to London to visit Father’s cousin, who had recently arrived from a village just south of Warsaw, and the second time, well, that was when we went to Broadstairs for a holiday but came home after two days because Mother saw Father touching a maid’s tits on the landing of our guest house.
I go into the railway station café and sit down at a table, adjusting Ruby so that she lies on my knee no more obtrusively than a small cloth bag half hidden under my coat. I feel in my pocket for the money. Two twenty-pound notes and some silver. It was all Mother had in her purse; the remains of the housekeeping.
I carry Ruby to the counter and buy a hot chocolate and a bar of Dairy Milk. Ruby is being such a good baby, tucked under my arm and still fast asleep, that the café woman doesn’t even notice I have a baby. Surely, if she’d seen, she would lean forward and coo and talk in a high-pitched voice. All she does is slam my change onto the counter and turn to the person waiting behind me. I am not special to her.
Back at my table, I sip my hot chocolate and study the timetable that someone has left lying in a pool of spilled tea. Trains to London go every half hour. The next one is in twelve minutes and I shall be on it.
Mother didn’t knock on my door until well after midday, when she left my usual lunch tray on the landing. I could barely get up out of my wet nest on the floor, but hunger drove me on all fours to get the food. No one knew I had pushed out my baby. I ate like a wolf and slipped the tray back outside my bedroom door, as I would normally do. Then I slept again. I don’t remember for how long. Ruby was thankfully silent, barely aware she was alive and quite content to suckle or sleep.
I’m standing on the platform now, close to the edge. A train rushes through the station, three feet from Ruby and me, drenching us in debris and excitement. We will soon be on our way. A garbled announcement tells me that the train to London is next. I don’t know what we will do when we get there, except be safe, anonymous.
No one will know that I am running away from my parents – parents who ordered my baby to be given up for adoption. No one will care about us in London and that, I know, is why we will be safe.
I am breathing each breath carefully, tiptoeing through each minute with my precious new baby, living it as if it’s my last. I expect my father’s strong hand on my shoulder at any time, my mother sobbing by his side, whimpering accusations at me. The police will suddenly blanket me, take my baby and hand her to some other woman, my parents nodding approvingly. I will be sent to prison and the only person allowed to visit will be Uncle Gustaw . . .
The train lumbers up to the platform and I climb aboard with the baby pressed against my body, her eyes peeking over the top of her blanket. What she makes of the world through those new, watery eyes, I don’t know. I read that newborn babies can’t focus on anything further away than their mother’s faces.
Ruby is suddenly alert, writhing in her cocoon and watching the scene around us as if she can make sense of everything she sees. I smile and kiss the top of her head. She is precocious and I am a proud mother. Ruby is already an intelligent baby. I walk sideways down the narrow aisle.
The train is crowded but I find a vacant seat next to a young man wearing headphones and reading a magazine. He doesn’t look up as I sit down but puts his elbow on the chair rest so I can’t have it. I unfurl Ruby, who is becoming restless. I notice that she has lost one of her little knitted bootees and her foot is cold. I rub her toes. My arms are aching from carrying her through the town and I don’t feel very strong today, a bit like I’m getting ’flu.
I fidget and get myself comfortable and the young man peeks at me sideways, then glances at Ruby. She is leaning against my body, trying to pull her arms from beneath her blanket wrapping. She lets out a frustrated yelp. Surprisingly, the young man smiles and then looks away again. I can hear the
tss-tss
of his music. Someone’s mobile phone rings and another baby squawks further down the carriage.
If I wasn’t on the run, if I didn’t want to keep it a secret that I’d got this baby and was fleeing to London, then I’d go and sit near the other baby so Ruby could make eyes at it. I could talk about babies with its mother, about which nappies she prefers and if she breast or bottle feeds. I’m a mother now, although I don’t feel I have any right to be at fifteen. I don’t feel proper. I bet that other mother would look down her nose at me and shift her baby out of reach. The train begins to move and I realise I’m travelling backwards.
Twenty minutes into the journey and Ruby is screaming. The young man next to me turns up his music and the lady across the aisle is staring. I am sweating in my parka. The sliding door at the end of the carriage opens and the ticket inspector leans against the first set of seats while the passengers open their bags or search their pockets for their tickets. Another six rows of seats and he’ll want to clip my ticket. I don’t have one. I stand up, gripping my screaming baby, and walk towards the conductor as if I’m drunk, one hand on the back of each seat as I go.
‘Excuse me.’ I turn sideways and slide past him as he is questioning someone about their ticket. I go through the sliding door and duck into the toilet. It stinks and the floor is wet. I kick the toilet lid down with my foot and slump onto it. There’s a tiny window. I could jump out. I did that when I ran away from home. I sat on the window sill and dropped into the bush below. I probably won’t see my family ever again.
‘What?’ I say to Ruby. She’s squirming and crying and twisting. Her arms have popped out of her shawl and her legs are beating. I hold her up, so her face is level with mine. For a second we lock eyes, an unfathomable connection, then her face reddens and crumples and she howls like she’s in terrible pain. I thought I would be a good mother.
‘Are you hungry?’ I fumble with my coat zip and layers of sweaters and T-shirts and finally dig out my aching breast. Ruby stops howling and begins to grumble. She makes a throaty snuffling sound, as if she can smell the milk that’s leaked all over my clothes. Within a second, her mouth is around my bursting nipple but she’s chewing and fussing and not latching on properly. She wants to drink but doesn’t seem able, as if something is wrong. Her little fists are clenched and beat about as she tries to feed from me. Milk has dribbled all over her face so I dab it with her blanket but that angers her even more. It’s as if she doesn’t like my milk.
‘Don’t have any, then,’ I say and pull down my clothes. We sit in the loo for about twenty minutes, waiting for the ticket inspector to move on, and the steady rhythm of the train gradually forces Ruby into reluctant sleep. Careful not to disturb her, I leave the toilet and stand in the space between the carriages. I think I’ll just stay here until we arrive in London.
I ran away because Mother and Father tricked me. All those months locked in my bedroom and they were plotting to steal my baby.
‘Hand over your baby, Ruth,’ Mother said tersely as if it was something to be disposed of before the dustmen came.
‘Come on now, Ruthie, be reasonable. What about your school work, the rest of your life?’ Father loomed over me, arms folded, looking so much like his brother.
Locked in my room pregnant, I went along with it, pretending that it was for the best, but all the while I was thinking of a plan. Too long I’ve played their game. I’m a woman now, I’ve got a child of my own. I’ll need a job, a place to stay. I’m going to get a new life. If they thought I was going to go back to school – I blow out in disgust and, just at that moment, I see the ticket inspector enter the carriage ahead through the far door.
The train seems to be wheezing and slowing so I push down the window and stick out my head, gripping Ruby so she doesn’t get sucked out. Half a mile up the track, I can see a station. I look back down the long carriage. He’s midway through now, not checking tickets any more because he thinks he’s done everyone. Signs for Milton Keynes flash past and the scrub grass gradually turns into concrete as we enter the station. I have my hand ready on the door lever and just as the train reaches a standstill, just as the carriage door slides open and the inspector walks into the void, I hit the button to open the door and leap off the train. Ruby’s head lurches forward and then back onto my breastbone. She wakes with a high-pitched scream and we’re running again, running away from the train and into the warmth of the dismal waiting room.
We sit and wait, me shaking, the baby whimpering.
Finally, Ruby is sucking on me. It’s taken nearly half an hour to coax her into drinking my milk and now she is guzzling on me. While she’s feeding, I remember my Dairy Milk and unwrap it with one hand. Ruby’s little head is nestled on my left arm and her knees are drawn up to her chest. She’s a ball of baby and blanket. I drop chocolate flakes onto her so I pick them off and pop them in my mouth, thinking that one day she’ll be able to eat chocolate too. I realise that I don’t know when that will be. I haven’t a clue when she should eat normal food or walk or talk or go to school or learn an instrument or do exams or leave home or get pregnant.
Ruby’s sucks are becoming less vigorous and less urgent, which is a good thing because my nipple is on fire. I was alone in the waiting room but a man comes in and, out of all the vacant chairs, he chooses the one right opposite me. I don’t want a stranger to see my tit.
‘How old?’ The man, probably in his forties, puts loads of shopping bags down and leans forward to get a better look. He’s out of breath and smells of the cold, earthy air. I’m not sure if he’s asking
my
age, disapprovingly, or Ruby’s so I ignore him. ‘My daughter’s fourteen now.’ He leans back again and sighs.
I lower my arm, so that Ruby’s head drops an inch or two in the hope she might let go of my nipple so that we can leave. But she’s stuck on hard and I want to scream out because it hurts. I pull the blanket up over Ruby’s head and my chest.
‘Make sure you cherish these early days,’ the man continues. ‘You never get them back.’ He cracks open a can of Coke. ‘So convenient too, that you’ve got, you know,’ he jerks his head at my chest and takes a swig of Coke, ‘milk on tap.’ He thinks he’s funny and laughs. He’s making me scared. There’s no one else in sight and even though it’s only half past two, the light is already turning purple-grey, like we’re in for some snow. I’m freezing and my nose is running.
‘Going anywhere nice?’ He’s staring at me.
‘I’m waiting for my husband, actually. He’s coming in on the next train. Then we’re going home.’ I say it like it’s real and for a second that’s almost as delicious as my chocolate bar, I believe it myself and imagine a handsome young man with slightly tousled but styled hair and wearing an expensive suit stepping off the train from his highly paid job in the City. He marches up to me, embraces his wife and daughter and then announces that he’s taking us both out for dinner before we go home to our warm, comfortable house . . .