Baby Love

‘I suppose we ought to talk,’ he said.

‘Don’t see why,’ I said.

‘It’s mine, you know,’ he said.

‘It?’ I said. ‘Yeah.’

‘I heard it was a girl.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She is.’

‘She’ll need to be registered,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I said. I was so glad Mum hadn’t answered the phone. She didn’t know the half of it, but she knew enough.

‘Call her Jane,’ he said.

‘Fuck off,’ I said. Janie had chosen Lily. Lily for a girl, Edward for a boy. If he didn’t know that he didn’t deserve to know.

‘Well,’ he said.

I said nothing.

‘I don’t know why you’re being so high and … sorry,’ he said.

I said nothing.

‘You’ll have to put my name on the birth certificate,’ he said.

I said nothing. Then, ‘yes’.

Well. It was true. You can’t dodge truth. Janie didn’t. And I can’t.

‘I insist,’ he said.

‘I said yes,’ I said.

He began to blurt: ‘Look, it’s not been easy for …’

I hung up.

Mum was furious when I told her. Dad nearly blew a fuse. He stormed out of the house, and came back half an hour later saying, ‘She’s right, you know.’

‘It doesn’t seem right,’ said Mum. But it was true. So.

*

So I rang Jim the morning after I saw Dizzy and told him he could come. I told him I would not tell Lily that he was her father. I asked him as a favour not to tell her himself.

‘Just come and see her, see how it goes, see what is going to happen, and tell her later. If you bugger off again how will it be for her?’ (‘Yes, you have a daddy, here’s your daddy, oh, yes, but you won’t be seeing him again.’ This is me fantasizing about the result I want, for God’s sake. The best possible result.)

‘What’s the point of that?’ he wanted to know. I tried to explain.

‘Angie,’ he said, ‘I’m not doing this on a whim. I want to do it. I’m not going to disappear again. Three years is a long time and things have changed. I’m her father and I want to be her father. It’s not anything personal against you and if you could stop being so prickly for a moment and work with me for Lily’s benefit …’ (He’s had counselling. He’s been talking to a social worker or something. That’s not his voice.) ‘… I would tell you that I appreciate everything you’ve done for her …’ (he appreciates what I’ve done? It’s not for him to appreciate that … who is he to appreciate what is done for Lily?) ‘… but things are going to change now. I’m sorry if it upsets you. I have every right to … visit my daughter and I intend to use that right. And my wife is coming too.’

Wife.

It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to make notes of our telephone calls, of what he said. Perhaps even tape them.

‘I’ll tell her that friends of Janie’s are coming. Please don’t tell her you’re her father.’

‘You’re asking me to lie to her.’

‘Please don’t tell her. She’d be upset.’

We arranged that they would come on Wednesday at four. This was Sunday. Just coming to tea.

*

Cooper kept ringing me wanting to know how I was doing. I started to hate the answerphone. I told him I was on the case but I wasn’t. I was starting to think that I really didn’t like what was going on. Not to fuss about it, of course not. I don’t fuss. Usually. I just get on with things. That’s what women do. Then occasionally you start to feel a little powerless. My least favourite feeling.

I made the mistake of trying to imagine what Jim was going to do. Wasted a lot of energy that way when I should have been concentrating, getting some work done.

I did become something else after the accident. I put together all the notes and things I’d written when I was in North Africa, dragged out my intellect from where I’d parked it after doing my degree, and wrote a book about the history and culture of Arab dance through western eyes. It was full of beautiful pictures and wild stories and did rather well, and now I am known to be the person who knows about belly dancing, harems, women in Islam, Orientalism and almost anything else in that direction that a journalist in need of a quote, or a researcher in need of a radio guest, might want. I work from home, my time is my own and I make a decent living.

Why do I feel I am writing this down in an affidavit?

*

Lily was on edge. I think she smelt it. She was excited about the visit. Friends of Mummy’s!

‘People who knew her, and want to see you. But you know lots of people who knew her, Granny and Grandpa and everyone …’

You can’t lie to children. It’s one of the great true cliches. She knew damn well this was important, because she saw it in my face and heard it in my voice.

They arrived exactly on time. Jim looked older, fatter, more unpleasant. There’s a certain nasty look that prosperity gives to some faces, and he had it. The wife was small and dark with neat hair. Early thirties, well looked after. I couldn’t make her out. She looked almost as if there were nothing to her – nothing to make her herself, rather than just anyone. Just small, neat, dark femininity. A sort of cipher, in expensive clothes.

I showed them into the kitchen. I had thought so hard about this and now all I could think was, ‘I wish we’d met somewhere else’. I felt a profound unease at not being able to read the wife at all.

‘My wife,’ said Jim. ‘Nora.’

Nora. Nora. Well that tells me nothing at all. Hey, stranger, who the hell are you and what are you doing here?

She smiled, a closed smile. I put the kettle on. What else?

Lily was upstairs. She’d said she didn’t want to come down because some friends of her teddy’s mummy were coming round. I called her. I was Judas. That woman there replaced my sister in this creep’s affections and they want you … I don’t know what they want of you but they want you.

Lily came down slowly, bringing the teddy, looking at the floor.