Castle Of Bone (10 page)

“What if she does come?”

“We’ll hear her. We’ll have to hide him fast.”

“Hide a
baby
. Are you
joking
?”

“She mustn’t know.”

“But someone’s bound to notice Penn’s missing, some time.”

The baby was quiet now, patting at Jean’s cheek. Jean shifted her face to one side of him to look at Anna. Hugh looked too, almost simultaneously. Anna was standing quite still, her arms by her sides, with hands curled up, shaking all over. Her eyes were shut, tears were spilling out and pouring down her cheeks.

“Anna,” Hugh said, questioningly. “Anna?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

“It’s done now. It’s happened. I think,” he said cautiously, “it would have happened some time anyway.” But the tears continued pouring down Anna’s face.

“You will have to pull yourself together, Anna,” said Jean officiously, forgetting her earlier panic. The baby was pulling at her hair now.

“Tonight’s all right,” she added. “Penn and Anna are meant to be staying with us tonight anyway or they could if they wanted to, Mum said. Their mother’s going out. But . . .” Hugh made a helpless, hopeless gesture. Anna merely began to weep out loud. Hugh wanted to go away now, do nothing, seek no solutions, but pulled himself out of that, through irritation mostly.

“Shut
up
, Jean. It’s all right, Anna.”

“It isn’t all right. How can we get him
back
?” Anna’s voice wailed somewhat, but at least she began to look more normal. For an unpleasant moment Hugh had wondered if she might be going to faint; she had looked so ashen white.

“I don’t know, not yet. We’ll think of something. But I don’t know,
yet
.”

The baby had started whimpering. Jean looked helpless again. “Do you suppose he’s hungry?” She jigged him up and down, but to little avail. Anna walked across the room and looked into the baby’s face as it peered over Jean’s shoulder.

“He
is
Penn. He looks like Penn.” The baby stopped whimpering and stared at her for a long time, solemnly. Then suddenly he smiled, while Anna smiled back. Hugh had never seen her smile like that before. It was a nice smile apart from anything else, and he realized he did not always like Anna very much, that is he did not always think her nice.

Both Anna and Jean seemed after a little while to become more concerned by the immediate problems of child-minding than by anything else. Hugh envied them.

“How old do you suppose he is?”

“Fourteen months? Sixteen?” Jean hazarded.

“What do babies of sixteen months eat, then?”

“Chopped things.”

“Liver, I remember,” said Anna. “Oh and mince. My aunt gave her baby mince once, I saw.”

“But not raw mince. And we can’t cook. Not without questions.”

“How long is he going to stay like this? For goodness
sake
,” Anna sounded frantic again, but this was a point that none of them cared to contemplate for the moment, and Jean suggested hastily, “There are always those little jars. You know the ones.”

“Yes, but those are for little
tiny
babies.”

“There are some for bigger babies too. Chopped things.”

“Well give him those then.” Hugh was bored of the discussion by now. “And meantime keep an eye on him. An eye . . .” He made a dive. The infant had started wriggling frantically. He was heavy enough, hard enough to hold without, that, so Jean had been forced to set him down, and in the discussion they had all forgotten him. Now Hugh saw him put the flex of the record player in his mouth. “Jesus, he’ll kill himself,” he said. But the flex taken away from him, Penn howled and struggled in Hugh’s unpractised arms.

“Shut him
up
, Hugh. Everyone will hear. For goodness
sake
.”

“Shut him up yourself if you’re so clever. Look, we’ll have to get a room organized for him. Your room’s better,” Hugh added hastily.

“My room isn’t so lethal. It had better be mine. I’ll clear it up with Anna. You can get the baby food, Hugh.”

“I can do
what
?” Hugh was appalled. “I haven’t any money . . .” Then, realizing it was a chance to escape, if only for a short while, added, “I dare say I could raise some.”

Outside the house the ordinariness of things was astonishing. But then so was the far from ordinary way in which Hugh found himself observing them. It felt like coming out of an exhibition of modern paintings and seeing the familiar world through the eyes of the artist, quite different eyes from his own. Or it felt like looking through a mirror, seeing familiar things in a dimension from which he was alien; quite cut off.

The racks of baby food in the chemist’s shop were another alien world – an unfamiliar one anyway. Hugh had never noticed them much before, but now nothing might have existed for him but the possibilities of beef with tomatoes or veal with rice or lamb with vegetables, all sealed in jars with coloured labels on.

“Can I help you?” a voice asked loudly. Hugh jumped, and also, to his annoyance, blushed slightly. “I want some of these,” he said, and blurted – to his annoyance once again – “for my younger brother.”

“I never thought it was for you. Well, take your time then. Looking’s free, unlike most things.” The assistant was very young, but Hugh did not look long enough to know much more than that, whether she was as pretty as she was impertinent. Annoyed with both her and himself, he became decisive, took a jar of spaghetti with beef, another of vegetables with lamb, a third of pears with apple; but a fourth – chocolate custard – he had to replace hastily, realizing he had enough money only for three. That cleaned him out, as it was, for the rest of the week. Hugh hoped Jean had some money, or Anna, whose brother after all was causing the expense, and wondered disconsolately again how long this could possibly go on.

A very old man came into the shop just as Hugh was leaving it, and asked for cough lozenges. His voice was like the shadow of a voice, the frail centre, from which the rest, the resonance, had been honed away. His clothes hung as on a frame. His face was suspended between two great ears and a jutting nose; two noses would have seemed appropriate for total symmetry. Hugh, half out of the shop already, stopped still and stared at him.

At first he thought: I’d rather die before I become as old as that. And then he wondered: what would the old man have looked like young, and then what would happen to him if he was put into the cupboard. Would he be made young also? Or could someone be too old for the cupboard to change them? And how much younger would he be made if the cupboard did work? A middle-aged man – a young man – a baby? The thought of him as a baby was bizarre – or bizarre looked at conventionally. But Hugh could feel normality slipping away, the fixed world melting about him. Who would look after him if he became a baby? He would not be claimed by anyone, his real parents must have died generations ago. Would you wrap him in newspaper and leave him on a doorstep, like the cases reported in the evening newspapers? Or would you be able at once to find someone who wanted a baby to adopt? All these dilemmas merged in Hugh’s mind after a while and moved it on to other questions; concerning another old man, the old man in the junk shop. What had the cupboard to do with him? Was it merely in his shop by chance? The thoughts kept galloping through his head, he could not tell how long they lasted. But the old man was putting the lozenges in his pocket as the assistant said, “Did they never tell you it’s rude to stare. Perhaps you’ve a little sister too, how about buying her some baby soap?”

“No thank you,” said Hugh. He walked out of the shop very slowly and deliberately. Then he ran all the way home, clutching to his chest the bag full of baby food, and bumped into his mother at the front gate.

“I’ve got to go out. I told Jean,” she said. “There’s cheese and eggs when you want lunch. Oh and yogurt.”

“There’s always yogurt,” said Hugh. “The last lot went bad.”

“And salad. You can make a salad.”

“Where are you going?” asked Hugh. He had too much on his mind to be much interested. But he felt he had a right to know.

She did not answer. At once he wanted to know very much.

“Where are you going?” he insisted. She looked at him this time. But all she said was; “Penn and Anna can stay if they want.”

“Why don’t you ever listen,” said Hugh, “When I ask you anything?”

“And of course they may be staying tonight in any case. Penn and Anna, Hugh.”

“I wasn’t asking about them.”

“Why shouldn’t they stay to lunch too? There’s plenty of yogurt.”

“They’d better like yogurt.” The baby might eat it, Hugh thought. That meant they could save the jar of apples and pears till tomorrow. Tomorrow. His mind tried to shy away from that word, but only came back to it. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ran through his mind. They had been reading Macbeth at school last term. Macbeth’s problems, he thought bitterly, had nothing whatever on his, murder was
nothing
by comparison with this.

Then it dawned on him that with his mother gone, they would be safe for a while at least. It was very odd, he thought, that it had taken him all this time to realize it. Now he was impatient for her to go. He saw her look down at his hands, at the bag of baby foods, carried half open, carelessly. But she did not seem to take in its contents and he closed it hastily.

“You might wash up. I’ll be back by three. I’m only shopping.”

Four, with luck, that meant, thought Hugh. She leant forward suddenly, might have been about to kiss him, but withdrew. There was a hole in the armpit of her shirt. She went straight off and up the road.

“Why are you buying
baby
food?” she called back suddenly, but did not wait for an answer. Hugh felt almost faint with shock. He dropped the bag and had to pick it up again. The glass jars, fortunately, remained intact.

Upstairs Hugh felt quite outside of things. The girls’ fussing over Penn excluded him; he did not know whether he cared or not, decided probably not. Jean’s room had been turned effectively into a nursery. She had improvised a cot with the mattress that was kept jammed under her bed and had been for years, and which was brought out whenever she or Hugh had friends to stay. Indeed either Penn or Anna would have slept on it tonight. But now she had put it in a corner and fenced it around with chairs. “I shouldn’t think he could get out of that,” she said. She had also found a whole lot of toys somewhere, mostly very battered.

“Isn’t it a good thing your mother doesn’t throw things away,” Anna observed.

“The garden shed’s just full of marvellous things,” said Jean enthusiastically – she had even unearthed an ancient pushchair. Hugh had to help the girls set it up; it had been folded so long it was reluctant to unfold at all, its joints seemed set, its parts inseparable. Nor were they assisted by having the infant Penn crawling about their feet, and by the kitten which had elected to appear from the basement, pleased with itself for some reason, purring loudly, and insinuating itself among them, until Hugh trod on a paw by accident, whereupon it miauled indignantly and retired to a safer distance.

Eventually, the three of them pulling as hard as they could, the pushchair unfolded, clicked into shape. It was a little drunken-looking perhaps, and decidedly rusty; but a usable pushchair for all that.

“Penn could have done that on his own. He’s strong enough,” said Anna.

“Well Penn’s not here, is he?” said Hugh, unkindly.

“Why do you want the pushchair?” he suddenly inquired, “Surely you’re not going to take him out?”

“No one will know who he is,” said Jean. “We’ll just say we’re obliging someone, looking after him.”

“You’re
mad
,” said Hugh. “We don’t know anyone with kids that age.”

“If we just take him in the garden there’ll be questions anyway,” said Jean.

“If we take him out,” said Anna, “he’s more likely to get to sleep.”

The baby fell asleep after they had fed it, much to their relief. It was only then they realized how anxious he made them. It was a bit like living with, an unexploded bomb, Hugh thought; they snatched their lunch like people between air-raids. Even Jean did not bother to organize them for once – it was Hugh and Anna boiled the eggs and washed the lettuce, while she stayed upstairs minding the baby. They ate the lettuce straight out of the colander with the boiled eggs and chunks of bread and butter and almost a packet of sultanas between them; it was better than yogurt, Hugh thought. Certainly better than the glutinous orange mess from the baby food jar – Penn had not cared much for that either, judging by the amount he’d spat out, with a delighted smile; they’d had to feed him cheese in the end. Jean said she was sure cheese was bad for babies, but Anna retorted that it was better than leaving him to wail with hunger, so announcing his presence to the world.

Hugh left the house on his own after lunch before Penn had woken, not saying that he was going, let alone where. He thought: they wouldn’t be interested anyway. They were only interested in Penn. He was halfway up the road before he knew where he was going himself, and then again he did not know if he had decided it himself or whether it had been decided for him. Either way there was no doubt. It was where he had to go.