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Maria was aching to be a mum but would her dream ever come true?
“Shall we hold on for your husband?” the doctor asked.
There was a clutch of cards on the desk between them – all storks and thank-yous and sherbety shades.
“No need,” Maria said. The meeting came and went with still no word from him, so she left.
Maria closed her eyes when the mother stepped into the lift. It was a habit and a defence. She didn’t know how to be around babies. No part of her behaved. Once, at a friend’s, just home with a newborn, she’d had to leave the room and had kicked the wall outside in frustration.
The toe of her shoe had caved in, though she pushed it out again later. The lift smelled of hospital disinfectant. Maria looked down.
She had those same shoes on today. The mother was wearing slippers, bobbled and red with a pompom on each toe.
One foot jumped and Maria supposed that she was soothing the child. She shut her eyes again but the presence of the baby reached her. Tiny wet noises and the smell, of course, sweet skin and milk. She looked across, as she’d known she would. “A girl?” Maria asked.
The baby’s blanket was peach. Her face was creased and puffy. She wore a hat with a stalk on top like an acorn cup.
“Yes,” the mother replied, with a sudden smile. In her bag, Maria’s phone began to buzz. The lift stopped and a nurse about Maria’s age pushed in a man in a battered wheelchair.
He was very frail. He smiled and said: “Ahh! Congratulations.” His nurse swivelled the chair to face the doors, but he craned his neck around and called back: “Gorgeous.”
Maria and the mother shared a second smile. The man started an old-fashioned whistling. Maria’s phone thrummed. Tom couldn’t stand it when she didn’t reply. He was a child like that, and in many other ways. He had no impulse control. The man reached his floor.
“Bye ladies,” he said, as though leaving a party. The mother was silent but Maria found herself calling, “Cheerio.”
There was just them now, and an oblivious teenage boy in headphones.
“Very new?” Maria asked. The child’s eyes still seemed sealed and the mouth sucked at nothing – that was the sound.
“Oh yes,” the mother replied. “You must be exhausted,” Maria said, but the mother just flexed her toes in her slippers and shrugged. Maria read Tom’s texts: “I am SO sorry. Today completely slipped my mind,” followed by the praying hands emoji, which struck Maria as pleading, and meant that he felt guilty and that this was no diary mishap.
He had given up. There had been lots of meetings and disappointments and she had felt his hope wane quickly, to be replaced by tolerance, and now, something far too close to peace.
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Babies have always made Maria uncomfortable, and newborns were no exception
“What are you thinking?” he asked her sometimes. “Nothing,” she replied, and then last week he’d said: “You’re secretive, do you know that?”
“Aren’t we all?” she replied, and thought: who spreads themselves open to be pored over, like a map? “She’s beautiful,” Maria said, suddenly.
The mother rolled the baby outwards and up. “Go on,” she said. The child’s cheek felt lightly furred to Maria. Her eyeballs rolled wildly under their lids.
“Thank you,” Maria said. At ground level, the boy held the door back as they passed, which Maria thought unnecessary but kind. “Oh,” the mother said, suddenly, vaguely. She looked out into the vast busy space. “What’s the matter?”
Maria asked. “I don’t see him,” she replied. “My husband’s not here.”
“He’ll turn up,” Maria said.
“Shall I wait? I can wait. I’ve nowhere to be.” Heading home, Tom’s last text had read, “Good telly tonite!” as if an ep, as he called it, of some show would have made not having this, what this woman had, all right.
“OK,” said the mother and turned to Maria and looked at her. Maria would never forget that face, fleshy and damp-looking with mismatched yellow-green eyes, one wider – just a touch.
Her hair was beautiful, dark auburn with a perfect curl.
BANNED: 17 classic books that were just TOO much
Thu, April 23, 2015
Imagine facing prison just for reading a book! As it’s World Book Day, we’re taking a look at some well-known novels that have been banned.
1 of 16
James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ was banned in the UK and the USA until the 1930s on account of its sexually explicit content
“I need the toilet,” the mother said.
“I’ve got to go. Will you hold her?”
At least, this is how Maria remembered it, though there were times when she wondered: did I offer? Was it me?
She calmed herself by asking: would it have mattered either way? For now, though, the baby was min her arms, warm and weighted, so much heavier than she had expected, pinning her down into the earth and her life, and a euphoria filled her and she thought: at last, this will be mine.
She saw herself going home to Tom and telling him that she does have a secret. She is pregnant, at last – has known for days – and now the doctor has confirmed it. But though he will always be its father, she doesn’t think she can continue to be his wife. The baby started to fuss, opening one gummy eye and calling out a high weak note.
Maria watched the loos and jiggled, as the mother had. The cry rose, quivering in the skin of the baby’s throat. Maria moved in bigger circles which steadied them both.
“You’re OK,” she said and scanned the room for someone who might be the other parent of this child. There was sound and movement everywhere and then a subtle disturbance, a change in the flow of the crowd. A man looked up crossly. A woman bent to an overturned bag. The automatic doors shut
and somebody moved fast along the outside of the hospital’s glass front. Maria saw that figure in glimpses. It was a woman, for sure. The hair looked right. And then the person stumbled and, as Maria watched, slid a naked foot back into the mouth of a red furred slipper, and was gone.
Alex Hourston’s second novel Love After Love (Faber & Faber, £12.99) is published on Thursday.