Ricochet Baby (11 page)

Prudence is trying not to think about wretched old Flo and her vulgar remarks as she sits and waits on the Quay. The trouble is, she wants exactly what Flo has outlined. You don’t forget old lovers as easily as all that.

And then he arrives, in that dashing, always slightly late style of his that she remembers from when they were students.

‘Do you want to move upstairs?’ she asks.

‘We are doing business,’ he reminds her, and her heart lifts. Prudence is an environmental policy analyst, with a budget of her own; she hires and fires staff. She has offered Paul a contract to find her a new office manager. Paul is quite right; they are civilised
people
, they have no need to hide out in back rooms, simply because of the past.

All the same, they can’t help looking at each other, over their coffee, which spreads into lunch, and a glass of wine each. Just one,
they say, we can handle that. They toast each other with a mock flourish. Prudence lowers her glass.

‘What’s the matter?’ says Paul.

‘I was thinking.’

‘Don’t.

‘About out our twenty-firsts.’

Just a week apart. Fay held a fancy dress party and they all hired
Phantom
of
the
Opera
costumes. Paul was the Phantom; he had lifted his mask and kissed her. ‘Marry me,’ he had said.

I
T IS ONE
of those sprawling dormitory suburbs people call Nappy Valley, reached by way of a treacherous hill road. The houses sit in rows, oblong and multi-coloured, pre-cut and assembled on site, interlocking like pieces of Leggo. The residents say there is more to it than this; there are garden walks and squash clubs, churches and drop-in centres, just like everywhere else. No doubt this is true, but this is not what I see as I cruise through the area where my map tells me Digglie Street should be. Cars rust on the verges and young women dressed in black, with shaven skulls, prowl around the corner dairies. Roads lead to nowhere, except a long way out along a coastal road to a beach where waves shatter against ragged stones.

It was a stupid idea to come here. I am driving in a loop that leads me back to the beginning of the valley. Instead of
looking
for Josh Thwaite, perhaps I will head out to the coast, take a walk by the sea and clear my head. As I idle the motor, a couple walk towards me, quarrelling and bitter. The man turns in response to something she says and slaps her face hard. The sad, untidy woman falters and walks slowly on behind him, her head bowed.

Wildly, I wonder if this is Josh Thwaite, the brute of my imagination, already unhinged by his financial dilemmas. I gun the engine, taking off without looking where I am going, and suddenly I am at 16 Digglie Street without knowing how I got there. I have to look twice at the number, for the six has fallen upside down so that it looks like a nine. It swings on a post behind an old Bedford van splatter-painted green and brown like an army vehicle. A sign on it reads I
GOT A HAIRCUT SO WHERE’S
THE JOB
?

Josh is in his painting gear when I walk down the path, or at least that’s what I take it to be. His face is covered with a mask like a beekeeper’s and he wears a once white overall, covered with
infinite
shades of bright, thick paint, a modern version of Joseph in his coat of many colours. As I push open the gate, the apparition advances down the path, the spray gun in his hand dripping
glutinous
purple paint. Behind him hang parts of car bodies hanging up to dry in an open shed, like fish ready to be smoked.

‘This is the third time. Don’t you fucking listen? We’re not buying stuff.’

I put down my briefcase and hold out my hand. Even as I’m doing it, I wonder how I will explain a purple paw when I get home. It turns out not to be a problem. Josh Thwaite isn’t shaking hands with anyone. He raises his spray gun and I duck.

‘You must have me mixed up with someone else, I’m not selling anything.’ I can hear how whimpery and apologetic I sound.

Josh lowers the gun. ‘A woman in your condition shouldn’t be out in the streets like this,’ he says, in grudging recognition of my pregnancy.

‘I’m not selling anything,’ I repeat.

‘Pull the other tit, it’s benefit day. Everyone flogs off stuff round here on benefit day. I told Leda, nobody’s putting a foot through this fucking door today, tomorrow or the next day. Not that she’s on a benefit,’ he corrects himself swiftly. ‘I earn money.’

‘I know that, Mr Thwaite. I’m from the Inland Revenue Department.’

Josh drops the gun and grape-purple paint showers the path. ‘Fuck,’ he says.

‘Perhaps I’ve picked the wrong time.’

‘Oh, fuck fuck fuck,’ says Josh, and kicks the spray gun into a collapsed paddling pool.

‘I was in the area so I thought I’d just introduce myself.’

Josh pushes the mask up off his face. Enter, the hero. Or the knave or the fool. He looks young. His features are rounded and generous, his skin olive; he regards me with large greenish eyes that slant upwards at the corners, under eyebrows which nearly meet across the bridge of his nose. His hair is cut in a straight line above his ears, and curls down his back in a swathe of thick ringlets pulled together with a rubber band. Now that
my prey stands revealed in front of me, I am terrified. A royal stud, that’s what he is; I should take him back to the office for Marise.

J
OSH
T
HWAITE HAS
had some bad luck in his life.

His first car broke down the day that he bought it.

He lost his Lotto ticket the night his numbers came up.

And there is the question of the fishing boat that sank like a stone one night when he was out at sea, and all that it has meant for him since.

He reckons his mother must have walked under a ladder when she was carrying him. Now, here is this Inland Revenue woman who looks like she’s off her head, wandered in from the street. He doesn’t have so much as a crock of shit at the bottom of the garden, and he wishes he did, just to fool them. He’d make sure they would never find it; bad luck doesn’t mean he’s not smart. But paperwork isn’t the bean in his minestrone. They’ll find something, because that’s their job, to cause people like him misery and
suffering
. But it looks as if he’s been chosen like a marble out of a jar, a random chance. Or perhaps the woman saw some flaw, something chipped, that he associates with himself and can’t explain, can’t see, but others do.

J
OSH’S POSTURE IS
threatening.

‘Personal service, eh? Well, the introductions are over. You can go now. Anyway, I don’t believe you, where’s your ID?’

When I don’t move, he says, ‘This is harassment. You said you were going to post the cheque back.’

‘I did.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘So how come I got it in my in-tray again this morning?’

His shoulders slump as I stoop to open my briefcase.

‘They must be crazy,’ says Josh, while I fumble through the papers inside. ‘They’re taking a bit of a risk, sending you out here. Don’t they know that?’ His tone is unpleasant.

I try to measure the distance to my car but I find my legs are trembling so much I can hardly stand up. A huge weight bears down inside me, like a flower press on rose petals.

‘I wanted to help,’ I tell him, straightening up to hand him the cheque. ‘If you could just correct the amount in the figures
compartment
and initial it, the problem’s solved.’

I watch him hesitating before he accepts the cheque. When he has studied it, he looks at me with real and growing wonder. ‘I see what you mean,’ he says at last. ‘But you came all the way out here to tell me this? What’s happening, the Inland Revenue going broke?’

‘No.’ I am gasping for breath, beginning to pant with the
exertion
of trying to explain. A pain like a butter churn has developed in my abdomen.

‘They’d notice you if I put it in the unclean box. Revenue Control would start to take an interest, can’t you see?’

‘Jesus.’ Josh’s bafflement is too much for him. He wipes his hand over his nose, smearing it with purple paint. ‘I’m doing a perkie for a mate. Guy wants his Honda painted the colour of grapes. It’s hard to get it right. Never painted grape before. Are you all right?’

I can’t remember answering this. The sun is a bright
lemon-coloured
circle above my head, the world turned full of
primary-colours
. At my feet lies a bright red puddle which isn’t part of Josh’s artwork.

A woman’s voice bellows from an open window. ‘Hey dick-head, what d’you think you’re up to?’ The door crashes open and Leda comes flying down the path, her fists raised. She’s thin, wiry and dark, wearing a headband, a black jacket even though the day’s so hot, and tight jeans. Her hands are covered with heavy silver rings like knuckle-dusters.

‘Another one of your girlfriends?’ she snarls at Josh, assessing my condition.

‘Never seen her in my life.’

‘Some shit.’ Leda’s mouth is thin and mean. For all the fury, there is something cloudy and distant about her eyes.

‘Help me, please.’ I have fallen to my knees on the path.

‘It’s the tax department,’ says Josh.

‘I can see why she’s been after you.’ She is spitting contempt.

‘Quit it, Leda, she’s having her baby.’

‘Tell her to have it somewhere else.’

‘Call an ambulance,’ says Josh. ‘Hurry up, or I’ll smack you in.’ With a flounce, Leda disappears inside. He kneels beside me, taking my hand as he helps me to lie down on the grass beside the path. He cradles my head against his knee. ‘What’s your name, Mrs Inland Revenue?’

‘Roberta.’

‘Roberta who?’

I close my eyes, giving myself up to pain, partly because I have no choice, but also because I don’t want to answer him. I have visions of him extracting information inch by inch, of phone calls, of Paul’s discovery of where I am and of what I have done. Because, already, I am aware that I am involved in consequences. All I want is to get away safely, back to where I belong, without anyone
knowing
where I have been.

But my baby has his toes in my throat as if he is trying to push himself clear, like a swimmer freeing himself from a bank into
midstream
.

‘Don’t push,’ Josh says, ‘for Christ’s sake, don’t push. You’ll tear yourself to bits if you do.’

Leda reappears from the house. ‘There’s been a truck and trailer crash on the hill,’ she tells him. ‘They can’t get an ambulance here for at least twenty minutes.’

They look at each other. ‘Take her,’ says Leda. ‘Go on, just get her out of here.’ I can see, even from where I am, that she has
shifted her position, that she accepts a responsibility she doesn’t feel for me. Perhaps it is just self-preservation; what she has on her doorstep could cause a bigger problem for her than she needs — there is the question of tax, and of the way Josh looks at her when he is impatient, as he is now.

Already he is helping me on to my feet; Leda, smelling of dope and Napisan, holds me up while he opens the van. She digs her fingers into my arm so hard that it hurts.

‘You’ll have to lie down in the back,’ he says. ‘I’ll drive slowly.’ I am thinking that Leda will come with us, but children are
emerging
from the house and I see that either they will come with us, or Leda will have to leave them on their own. It will be Josh and me, the two of us.

‘Just hold on and breathe nice and slow,’ Josh says, ‘you know about that?’ Leda has produced a grey-looking pillow, which he arranges beneath my cheek. Very slowly, yet steadily, the van takes off along the road. I try to concentrate on the inside of the van,
hoping
to stave off another contraction; it is an interesting variation on thinking of England. The steering wheel is covered with tiger skin; crystals and a brass cross hang over the back window. The lights in the crystals are a distraction, dark eddies of fire and gold, like the forces at work in my body, shimmering and glowing above me. As much as I am able, I give myself over to this light.

‘Bloody hell,’ says Josh. We have arrived at the accident site near the crest of the hill. The ambulances have gone, but the road is still blocked by wrecked vehicles and police cars. We are caught in a build-up of traffic that stretches out of sight down the other side. Josh stops the van and comes round to me in the back seat.

‘Roberta,’ he says, as if I am an animal he is shepherding, ‘I’m going to leave you for a minute.’

‘Please don’t.’ I can remember clutching his hand, desperate for reassurance that I won’t be alone. He leans over me and I smell mint, wild and clean, as if I am having my baby in the great outdoors.

Which, in a sense, I am. In a lucid second, before the pain grabs again, I recognise spearmint gum; Josh is close to me, taking on the same laboured breathing patterns as my own, as if he has become part of the action.

‘I’m not going anywhere without you,’ he tells me. ‘There’s a pile of traffic cops up there. I’ll get them to clear a path through for us. They can phone ahead and tell Hutt Hospital we’re on our way.’

‘But I’m supposed to have my baby in town.’

He smoothes my face with the palm of his hand. ‘It’s too late for that.’

‘Why did you come?’ he says, while we are waiting for the police to come. ‘Didn’t you know it was going to happen?’

‘It’s my first,’ I say. There is such a current of energy between us that it scares me. I search blindly for his hand.

‘Who are you? What’s your name?’ he asks.

‘I told you.’

‘Yes, but the rest of it. This is crazy. I mean, man, it’s fucking surreal.’

‘I muster the strength to put my fingers on his lips. ‘Don’t keep asking questions,’ I say. Though everything he is asking me is perfectly reasonable. How come I didn’t know this morning? Or did I? I
probably
did. I want to explain to him the way I’ve watched animals go off on the farm to have their offspring. They don’t want anyone around. Only this sounds precious and absurd. People want people, this is what we’ve been taught. It is clear to me that this is not Josh’s first delivery and I guess he would find my reasoning unsound. It’s not even reason, it’s something more primitive and strange, the difficult side of my nature. If I look down off the beam I will fall. I am afraid that he will start massaging and prodding me, as Ann Claude has shown the men, but, also, I am terrified that he will leave me.

‘I’ll take her in my car, sonny,’ says the policeman.

I shape a silent no at him, but I hope that it has the force of a scream.

‘I don’t think she can be shifted again,’ says Josh. ‘Too risky.’

The policeman hesitates; he’s even younger than Josh, and nervous. You can see it running through his mind that he might be doing the wrong thing, but he doesn’t want me in his car, because that might turn out to be a bigger mistake.

‘Can you sit her up?’

‘I’ll try,’ says Josh, and I find that, after all, I can sit up, with the belt looped across me. This seems to satisfy the policeman.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘let’s go.’

‘Ever been part of a car chase?’ Josh asks. Sirens are wailing and lights flashing all the way across the hill, round the tortuous bends. There are police cars behind and ahead of the van. The young policeman talks into his radio; he turns to smile and nod encouragement as he leads us through the red lights.

As we sweep through the hospital gates, a huge pain bears down through my pelvis, grating me up as if my bones are caught in a vice.

‘She could have done with an epidural but I think she’s closer than that,’ Josh tells the orderly who wheels me through the
corridors
. The sense of drama follows us on past afternoon visitors
arriving
with bunches of flowers and bags of grapes.

‘You coming in with her?’ the orderly says to Josh, as if there is really no question.

‘What do you want, Mrs Inland Revenue?’ he asks.

‘I want you to be around, that’s all,’ I say, ‘no big deal.’

A
MIDWIFE HAS
been hastily summoned as she dons her bike helmet to go home after a previous delivery, and she and an older nurse, also on relief, have taken charge of the delivery room. The ceiling is filled with luminous lights like flying saucer discs.

‘She won’t be long,’ the midwife tells Josh, when he
reappears
wearing a gown. She has short-cropped hair and
double-pierced
ears. She shoots Josh a puzzled glance, as if she’s seen him before. He holds a glass of water to my dry lips, wiping my burning face with a damp, cold cloth. Even my teeth have begun to ache, like people who get caught unexpectedly at very high altitudes.

‘Shit,’ I yell. I bite Josh’s hand.

‘Language,’ says the older nurse.

‘Leave off,’ Josh says, his voice totally focused around me. He seems unfazed by my attack.

‘Nearly there,’ the midwife says. ‘Look, you can see the crown, it’s dark.’

Josh looks at me, and I look straight back at him. ‘You can go now,’ I say. I want to show him but I can’t. I have an interior
journey
to make and he knows it’s time for him to leave. If Paul were here he would be busy organising me and demanding that I have gas and pain relief and all that sort of thing, whether I wanted it or not. Paul would be scared.

‘Just don’t get too far away,’ I tell him.

‘Never mind,’ says the midwife, whose name is Poppy, when he’s gone, ‘there was a time when all men did was fetch the hot water.’

I don’t bother explaining to her that I’m happy about Josh Thwaite being a filler of water bowls — this is what I want.

I am handed a mirror and, in it, I see that the wide house of my body is opening, my flesh has turned raisin brown and in its centre is a growing sprout of hair. The huge disc-like lights hover above me, ebbing backwards and forwards. In a moment, like an exploding star, my son is born.

‘Yes,’ I say, triumphant, ‘yess.’ I have done it, all on my own.

And there is his cry, a thin little bark that grows louder and stronger.

‘Tell Josh he can come in,’ I say, when I have caught my breath, tasting his name for the first time.

In a few minutes, while the midwife works over me, the nurse hands my boy, clean and rolled in a white cotton blanket, to Josh.

‘Have you got a name for him?’ the nurse asks me.

‘Nathan,’ I tell her. I say it right off the top of my head, not a name I’ve thought of before. Josh nods his approval, doting over my son in a face-splitting way.

‘Your first?’ the midwife asks him, again with that quizzical expression.

‘No,’ says Josh, pushing the baby into her arms. The violence of his reply shocks everyone in the room. He starts to back away, his face now frozen in a kind of horror as he looks at me.

‘Paul’s the father,’ I say weakly. ‘We’ll have to get Paul.’

‘Oh dear,’ says the relieving nurse. Her look indicates that I should count myself lucky to have anyone here at all, in the
circumstances
. She has seen us all, young women who have had sex with so many men that, science or no science, even DNA couldn’t sort out who and when our babies have been conceived. She doesn’t need to say it — a slut’s a slut.

‘I don’t want any fights in here,’ is what she does say.

‘I’m not responsible,’ says Josh.

‘They all say that.’

‘Paul’s my husband,’ I insist. ‘He works in the city.’

‘He won’t like this then.’

‘No,’ I agree, ‘he won’t.’

Josh slides out the door.

‘Somebody will be coming round to take your details soon,’ the midwife says. ‘I can’t understand how you didn’t book in. Haven’t you been seeing a doctor?’

‘Of course I have. Mr Maitland.’ I note her surprise with
satisfaction
. ‘The baby wasn’t due for another month.’

‘The midwife sits on the end of the bed. I can see her and the nurse reappraising me. The midwife’s glance takes in my gold watch, which nobody has had time to remove, and the circle of
diamonds
beside my wedding band.

‘Impossible. He’s nearly eight pounds.’

‘He’d probably have been an elephant if he’d waited any longer,’ I say, looking down at him. I hold him gingerly as he looks for something in a blind, bunting way. His fists open and close, as if he is surprised to find himself where he is. I give him my finger to hold, so that he doesn’t feel as if he has come into the world empty-handed.

‘Monkey face,’ I say.