Go to Sleep (16 page)

* * *

I can’t lay a newborn baby to sleep in a house that’s infested with rodents. Maybe
that’s
why he doesn’t sleep. Perhaps the mice are nibbling at his toes or his cheeks as he lies in his cot. I shudder and call pest control. The emergency number clicks through to an automated response. Cursing them, I check the time on the wall clock and laugh bitterly. It’s gone 9 p.m. I don’t want to bother Dad and Jan at this late hour, but the heating has clicked off now and soon I’ll hear the scurry and scratch of mice claws. I pace the room, rocking and cradling the tragic, wizened Joe. He’s fast asleep and I still can’t go to bed. I hear a scuttling noise and pick up the phone.

‘Dad. I’ve got mice,’ I announce.

‘Mice?’

I hear Jan clatter across their woodblock floor in the background.

‘Mice? At
this
time of year?’ she whines.

‘Are you sure?’ Dad asks.

‘Of course I’m
sure
!’

‘Well . . . everywhere’s closed. There’s nothing we can do now, till tomorrow. Do you want to come and stay here? I can pick you up in a jiffy.’

‘Not really,’ I say.

I wait for him to offer a mercy mission to Tesco to buy poison and mousetraps. I don’t care if it’s inhumane. My child is not living in a flat that’s got mice.

‘Well, you
will
call us if you need anything, darling? And I’ll be over first thing.’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’

Thanks for nothing. I put the phone down, reminded abruptly of my place in his world. I gaze down at Joe in my arms. He’s so frail, so feeble. I move closer to kiss his full cheeks, but I have to pull away; his little face seems full of hatred. His lips are twisting and leering, and I cannot look at him. Even in his sleep, it seems Joe’s taunting me. Needled by my child, irked by my father and the mice, I know that there’s no way I’ll be sleeping tonight.

There’s nothing we can do now, till tomorrow
.

You mean nothing you and Jan can do, but there’s something
you
can do, Daddy.

And the more I stew, the more all this starts to make sense. He’s trying to teach me a lesson! He’s calling my bluff – his feisty, headstrong, wayward daughter, determined to do things her own way. And, more than anything, he’s telling me, you’ve made your bed, darling, now lie in it. Drown in it.

I shift position on the sofa then wriggle again, trying to get comfortable. He’s never been able to articulate it, Dad, but what I know is this: he disapproves of my life, utterly. He disapproves of the route I’ve taken, and the steps that I’ve taken to get here. He’s always harboured hopes that the life lessons he gave me would have somehow led me elsewhere; that I might have become somebody different to the person I am today.

* * *

Not long after Mum died I made up my mind what I wanted to do with my life. I was nervous, even then, letting Dad know – letting him down. I could see the betrayal in his eyes; hear the bitter tang of disappointment in his too-jovial response.
‘Social work? Darling! That’s . . . fab!’
Honestly. He said that my life-choice, my passion, the thing that I had decided to devote my working career to was ‘fab’. I must have gulped or flinched, because he grabbed my hand, squeezed it hard, staring right into my eyes:
‘Such a noble profession, darling
.’

But I knew what he was thinking, then as always. This is a reaction to her mother’s death. A little phase she’s going through. She’ll come round in time. This is what people do when they lose a loved one. They’re consumed by the need to
do
something, something good. They run marathons, climb Everest, swap their high-flying city jobs for the front lines of brutal civil wars. And Dad was not so wrong, thinking that of me. I did my penance, too – but there were no marathons, no huge feats of endurance. Instead, I served my time selling moth-bitten cardigans in Oxfam on Allerton Road. I did my bit, for sure. But if Dad thought my career path was all bound up with Mum’s passing he was sorely mistaken – not that he’d be able to accept it if I beat him with the truth from now till eternity.

My back is starting to ache. I shift position again, and I can almost smell the musty Oxfam store. Ha! How Mum
would have hated that. She was frugal to a fault, Margaret Massey, yet she’d rather go without than have anything whatsoever to do with secondhand goods. During my short-lived Goth phase I’d come home with long black overcoats and elbow-length black lace gloves and she’d shudder with real disgust.

‘You have no idea where this coat’s been. It could have belonged to a murderer.’

No, she wouldn’t have wanted her daughter selling other people’s leftovers any more than she’d have welcomed me putting on a pair of running shoes or swapping my vintage brooch for a pink ribbon. The idea of five hundred women running through the Mersey tunnel in loving memory of their dearly departed was just plain daft to my mum. Death, dying – this was a private affair.

But nor would she have wanted this for me, to tell the truth; she would have yearned for something grander in scope and ambition. Law or Medicine would have fit her notion of a ‘respectable’ profession – and boy did Mum love respectable! Yet even so, I have a sneaking feeling that in her deepest, most private recesses Mum nurtured ambitions of my being, well, famous. It’s laughable. I’m almost laughing now, remembering her encouraging me to stand on a stool and sing ‘Yesterday’ at her best friend’s fortieth birthday party, my cheeks smarting crimson as my six-year-old self stood stiffly and battered out the syrupy old standard. Ha! Yes, Mother would have had
me on
Britain’s Got Talent
had she lived. So much for respectable.

And anyway, it isn’t even social work what I do, is it? Not in the purest sense; not according to Mum. I can see her now, I can hear her:

‘Youth
Exclusion
Officer? Is that what they’re calling it now?’

At least Dad did the decent thing and swallowed his prejudice – and his pride – supporting me once he finally accepted it was all too late to halt my decision. He topped up my grant himself rather than allow me to take on an overdraft, and even I would have to admit he had an uncanny knack for second-guessing my homesick blues, mysteriously turning up in Nottingham ‘on business’, when he’d take me out for a good old feed and an inevitable row about music or politics. But mostly we argued about me, my choices.

‘I can make a difference, Dad. I can really
do
something.’

‘I know, darling. I think it’s wonderful.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Dad! Where d’you think I get these high and mighty notions from?’

‘Rachel,’ he’d laugh – but he was upset. ‘I’m not patronising you. I—’

He was. He was patronising me.

‘Dad. If you hate what I’m doing so much, just take a look at yourself.’

‘Love, for the last time . . .’

‘You and your reggae and your shebeens and your Liverpool 8.’

‘I
love
reggae. I love Liverpool 8.’

‘And you tried to force-feed it to
me
.’

‘I did
not
!’

‘Well, sorry. Whether you did or you didn’t, it worked. I got the bug. Okay? Congratulations. Street-life, low-life, counter culture. Call it what you want, it’s in me. And that’s down to you.’

‘But, honey, I
celebrate
that.’

‘And
that’s
why I’m doing what I’m doing, okay? Whether you like it or not.’

I can see myself jutting my chin out, just like Dad does, challenging him to disagree with me. I can see him studying me carefully, an idea dropping into place. I can see him cogitate, chew it over, think about saying it; change his mind. Then he comes out with it.

‘Rachel? Is it that time of the month? Your mother was a terrible slave to the—’

And I’m up, towering over him, a small globule of sticky toffee sauce on my chin.

‘How dare you! You condescending
voyeur
. At least I’m getting my hands dirty, Dad.’ I’d stare at him with real malice. ‘Don’t bother coming again!’

And I’d turn and storm out of the restaurant leaving him sat there, twitching, instinctively reaching for his phone to text his love and his ardent apologies to me
before the door had even slammed shut. I’d leave him to suffer, but we’d be friends again by the time the week was out.

*

In the blink of an eyelid the streets are silent, the temperature dropping way, way down. The room is plunged into darkness and the entire building is silent except for a distant drift of music coming up from the flat below – some deep-bottomed aching reggae track. I can’t just lie here, like this. Sooner or later I will have to carry Joe upstairs and face the night. I will have to brush my teeth, put on my nightdress, hover on the landing before entering the bedroom, that jangling thread of inner dread pulling tighter. I shall take a deep breath and plunge into the darkness, sink into my bed, wait for whatever lies ahead. But not just yet.

I switch the television on, then mute it. Every bodily instinct is telling me to sleep but I can’t face going up there. Too many spectres are troubling me; there is a lurking dread within that refuses to declare itself. Maybe it’s James. Or Ruben. The mice. Dad’s imminent trip. It’s all of these things; it’s none of them.

I find myself standing at the window, seeking solace in the squares of light across the street. The idea that there are other mothers like me, standing at their window, willing the first fissures of dawn to crack the sky, offers
hope if not strength. Yet the idea that there, too, sitting behind them or beneath them is a husband, a partner, a lover, someone,
anyone
to lean on, to turn to – that just slays me with sorrow.

*

There it goes again. Scuttle-scratch-scuttle. Back and forth, back and forth across the floorboards beneath my bed. I bolt upright and snap on the light, hoping the sudden staccato of my action will scare them away. I’m shaking all over. I try to breathe, slow and deep. Inch by inch I edge myself to the lip of the bed then carefully lower my head down over the side and peer underneath. Nothing.

I check the time. 1.17 a.m. I change Joe’s nappy while I’m up. He wakes in the process so I feed him. And then it’s after three in the morning. A shrill cacophony of birds already, singing one long, demented, off-pitch note. I wind Joe, and take satisfaction from three fat, wet burps. I lay him back down, and he seems content.

I close my eyes. Start to drift.

Scuttle-scratch-scuttle. It sends a shiver through the bones behind my ears. It’s playing games with me now. I’ll show the little bastard! I grab a big hardback and lean over the edge of the mattress and lie in wait. I can hear it; right below me, now. I wait until it sounds like it’s right next to my nostril and SLAM! I bring the book right down with all my might, sending the bedside light
clattering to the floor from the recoil. Joe wakes up screaming passionately with fear as well as fury at being woken. And this time he’s not going back down.

I wrap Joe tightly into his buggy and, walking backwards, carefully negotiate the stairs – clunk, clunk, clunk. I let us out into the damp pre-morning and push him down Belvidere, some weird magnetic pull directing me towards the river. The air is wet and cold, the low moon a milky smear behind the cathedral; high above, stars still burn sharp and bright. The wind sharpens around us and chases us down towards the heavy black slap of the river. I leave the pram and get up on the railings, push my head right out into the river spray and let it lick my face and cool my hot breasts, and it feels good. I stay there, the wind whipping my ears till I’m deaf.

I don’t see her at first, but experience a slow and gradual awakening from my reverie to the sweet, childish refrain of a nursery rhyme or lullaby rising on the wind, then blowing away. I turn, and there’s a girl pushing Joe’s buggy round in circles. She’s younger, much younger than I am, and she never looks up. She keeps her smiling eyes on Joe, shushing him and pushing him in circles, close to the edge; right by the drop to the river below. Yet I feel no fear, no panic or possessive lurch. It seems fine that this girl is looking after my son. It feels right. I watch them a beat longer, then hop down from the railings, the
landing sending a painful jolt through my numb calves. The girl has parked her own pram by the pathway. I make my way over and she steps away from Joe.

‘She was just like that,’ she laughs, nodding at her beautiful but unwieldy pram. There’s not a sound from her baby – not a murmur. ‘First few weeks I was going off my head,’ she says.

‘Thanks,’ I laugh, stooping to look at her daughter. She doesn’t stir. ‘You don’t want to swap, do you?’

She doesn’t smile back, just looks at me, and we know each other. The bond between us is strong and immediate, this enormous thing of motherhood: its living nightmare, its impossible dream. Now she smiles – a warm, reassuring, radiant smile that fills me up with cheer.

‘You’ll be fine, love. Really. It’ll all be fine.’

I feel vulnerable at one so young calling me ‘love’, radiating such
certainty
about this thing. If she’s finding all this so easy, then why can’t I? But I don’t want doubt or fear coming between us. I went through pregnancy scorning that cosy culture of mum-pals (after all, why would a bitch cease to be a bitch just because you’ve had a kid on the same ward?). Instinctively, I like this girl. I want her to be my friend. I take the final step, hold out my hand.

‘I’m Rachel,’ I say. ‘And this little devil is Joe.’ She eyes me and it’s weird. She’s looking at me . . . well, she’s looking at me with something akin to affection; or concern. Maybe it’s concern in her eyes. To say it’s love
is absurd, but she just looks at me like that for what seems an age. I have to break the silence, and force another staccato laugh. ‘You’ll have to tell me your secret,’ I grin.

But instead of answering, she pads back to her pram, glances once over her shoulder and says:

‘Finnegan.’

And then she’s away, putting all her might into heaving that shuddering great pram.

‘Bye, Mrs Finnegan,’ I murmur to myself. Another one I’ve scared away.