Keeping Secrets (18 page)

Miriam put the little photograph back in the envelope, back in the pocket, zipping it up again. She pressed her face against the jacket, which Stephen had had for years; then she went out of the studio, closing the stable doors very carefully, shutting everything away behind them, and walked up the path to the house.

‘Mum? Mum!'

Outside in the darkening lane, Jonathan's lift had dropped him

off, and the car was driving away. Inside, the front door had banged; he was coming through the hall into the kitchen, dropping things. It was after five.

‘Mum? You okay?'

‘Fine,' said Miriam steadily. The bottle was under the table, with the glass. Did it smell in here? ‘Had a good day?'

‘All right. Hi, Tess.' He bent down and rubbed the dog's head, patting Miriam absently on the shoulder as he straightened up. ‘What are you doing in here with the lights off?' He went to the door and flicked the switches; Stephen's spotlights came on, tastefully illuminating corners. ‘Any tea?'

‘I've got rather a bad head,' said Miriam truthfully. ‘You couldn't put the kettle on, could you?' She heard herself speaking slowly, flatly, as if she had been in an accident, and were trying to keep everyone calm.

‘Sure.' He went over to the Rayburn, picking up the kettle, and filled it from the tap. ‘God, I'm hungry.' He put the kettle back again, and went into the larder. She could hear him banging tins, opening lids in search of biscuits.

‘Sorry,' she said, still motionless at the table, not daring to rise. ‘I was going to go to the shop, but –'

‘Doesn't matter, I'll make a sandwich. Do you want anything?'

‘No thanks, darling, just tea.' She pointed to the tabletop. ‘There's a postcard. For you, I mean.'

‘Oh?' He came over, and picked it up, turning it over. ‘Oh.' He slipped the card into his back pocket, and went to the breadbin. ‘Did you read it?'

‘Yes,' said Miriam. ‘Do you mind?'

‘It doesn't matter.' He sliced off the end of a loaf.

‘Is she nice?'

‘She's all right. Was there anything else in the post?'

‘No,' said Miriam. ‘Nothing.' She hesitated, wondering. ‘Why? Should there be?'

‘Only a catalogue.' He was spreading the bread with butter, getting honey out of the cupboard over the breadbin. The kettle came to the boil and he made the tea with one hand, eating with the other. ‘Not for dirty books,' he added. ‘Only tapes. Has Tess had a walk?'

‘No,' said Miriam again. ‘I was going to, but –'

‘I'll take her out in a bit.' Jonathan set down the teapot before her, with two mugs and a milk bottle. ‘Are you really okay?'

‘Just my head.'

He patted her shoulder again, and poured out the tea. ‘You'll feel better when you've had this,' he said, and she smiled, looking up at him for the first time.

‘Sorry,' she said again.

‘What for? You can't help having a headache, can you?' He picked up his mug and the second half of the honey sandwich. ‘I'm going to watch
Neighbours
, okay? Why don't you go and lie down till Dad gets back? I'll get supper if you like.'

‘You are a darling. It's all right. I'll be fine in a minute.'

‘Well – shout if you need anything.' He went out, followed by Tess; she could hear him turn on the television in the sitting room, and the bouncy, happy signature tune begin. She drank the tea he had made her, lacing it defiantly from the bottle beneath the table.

Blazing days. The grass in Anya's garden was full of dry brown patches, and the trees at the far end, and in the square, were dusty and still. Hilda had all the windows open at night, and still couldn't sleep; she walked to work in the mornings beneath a hot blue sky, feeling heavy and slow,

Stephen was in Italy, with the family, taking Jonathan out of school for a fortnight because he had too much on later in the summer. They wouldn't be able to do that next year – Jonathan would be taking his A levels. Hilda watched for the post, and read and re-read the single letter that had arrived so far. Stephen was tired, and did not feel up to writing properly, though he missed her, as always. Hilda missed him, too, and couldn't help wondering at this tiredness, this single letter. Her feelings of doubt and anxiety, however, came mostly at night. At college, where the students were sitting exams in a heatwave, and everyone was winding down, she mostly forgot them.

In the last weeks of the term she was enjoying her afternoon classes with the Asian mothers. On Thursdays, when they did no writing and she held an open conversation group, they sat beneath the high open windows on grey plastic chairs in a circle – it reminded her of the hospital ante-natal classes. Many of the women had been with her all year, and what had begun, last autumn, as a halting, high-pitched, faltering class, felt now like a well-knit group of friends, meeting for gossip.

They showed Hilda photographs of their weddings, and gave her recipes; they talked about their children, and overcrowded schools, and the racist taunts and slogans on the estates.

‘It is not possible for us to go out at night; it is simply not possible.'

‘For Englishwomen, too,' said Hilda, ‘it can be very frightening.'

‘But even in the daytime, it can also be very unpleasant.'

At home, they watched
Dynasty
, and prepared elaborate meals. In the last few weeks of term, knowing that Hilda was taking maternity leave, and would not be back in September, they had begun to ask her questions: did the baby move a lot, did she hope for a boy, would she bring him in to show them?

‘I want a girl,' said Hilda.

‘But your husband – he will be wanting a son.'

Hilda hesitated. ‘He has a son already.'

‘Ah, you have a son? Well, that is very good.'

‘No –
he
has a son. My – the father.'

‘Ah.' A pause. ‘He has been married before. I am sorry, I did not understand.'

Shall I tell them? Hilda wondered, as the class ended and they pushed back their chairs. On her way upstairs to the library she stood at the mesh-covered window on the landing and watched the women leaving through the gates with their children in pushchairs, going to collect the older ones from school. None of them had fewer than three, and several had five or six, as well as looking after an endless assortment of nephews, nieces, young cousins. Hilda had felt, since the baby had begun to move, and she had begun to believe it existed, that in becoming a mother she would have something in common with these women, something they could identify with, and talk about, where before she must have appeared out on a limb, childless at thirty, incomprehensible. Now she thought: if I tell them the truth I might alienate them completely. Nice Asian girls don't. Or if they do it is a tragedy. That's the myth, anyway.

In the last class of the term they gave her a present, a large soft parcel wrapped in silver and pink paper with babies all over it, blue-eyed, with question marks of hair, sucking their thumbs. Inside was an acid-pink nylon pram quilt and matching pillow, and a pink nylon jacket and bootees.

‘Of course, we are buying pink not knowing,' said Parveen, smiling. ‘If it is a boy you will be having to change it, but it is from a shop in the High Street, and we have kept the receipt.'

‘I am sure it will be a girl,' said Laxmi, as Hilda floundered, her lap full of the puffy pink quilt and the paper. ‘If it is a boy you are carrying it very high, see …' She gestured to her own stomach. ‘My sons, they were all up here. You are very low.'

‘We wanted to give you what you wanted,' said Veneta.

‘You're very kind,' said Hilda. ‘I wasn't expecting anything.'

‘Except a baby,' said Parveen. ‘Of course you are expecting that.'

Everyone laughed, and Hilda got up and put the presents carefully on a table by the open window. From outside they could hear the children in the crèche, playing in their fenced-off bit of the yard. ‘Sometimes it still doesn't feel real,' she said, coming back. ‘I can't quite believe I shall ever have a baby at the end of all this.'

‘It is like that with the first, I can remember. By the time you have your third or fourth – it is all very real then, Hilda. Too real!'

They laughed again, warmer and more open with her than they had been all year. It's true, she thought, all these years when I felt an outsider, I was. I'm part of a circle now, part of the flow. Except, of course …

She said: ‘But I only want one.'

‘Just one?' They were incredulous. ‘No, Hilda, you must have more than one, she will be lonely.'

‘And besides,' said Laxmi, ‘perhaps later your husband will be wanting another son. Is your … adopted son, I mean your stepson, that is the right word, is he living with you now?'

Hilda flushed, and Aysha, the Muslim woman whose thick white headscarf was drawn right across her face, up to her glasses, when she arrived, and only taken off inside the classroom, said quickly: ‘We are asking Hilda too many questions about her private life.'

But once you're a mother you're out in public, Hilda thought. I shan't actually, be quite private ever again. That's the price.

‘It's all right,' she said, and drew a breath. ‘Actually, I don't live with my – with the father. I'm having the baby by myself.'

‘He has left you? Oh, Hilda …' They were all concern. ‘How will you manage?'

‘He hasn't left me, he was never with me. I wanted to have the baby alone – well, that's not quite true, I had no choice. But I don't mind.' She heard herself give an embarrassed laugh. ‘I'm hardly the first single parent in Hackney.'

There was silence. Then:

‘But, Hilda, it will be very difficult for you,' said Veneta. ‘It is very hard work, looking after a baby.'

A murmur of agreement.

‘Do your husbands help you?' she asked directly.

‘Not with the babies, no, of course not,' said Parveen. ‘What can they do? But when the children are older, naturally the children must have their father with them, to teach them, isn't it? For the discipline. And if it is a boy, a son in particular needs his father …'

‘And of course there is the financial side,' said Laxmi gently.

‘But I'm coming back to work, aren't I?'

‘But even so …'

There was another pause, in which the tick of the clock on the wall could he heard. It was almost the end of the class. Then Laxmi said hesitantly: ‘Hilda – is it that your boyfriend is married?' and Hilda said simply: ‘Yes.'

‘But his wife, what is she thinking?' said Laxmi, as if unable to stop herself, and Hilda, feeling every eye upon her, flushed deeply.

Outside, one of the nursery children had fallen over, and begun to cry.

‘I hope that's not Raji,' said Veneta, and looked at the clock. There was a silence then which did not feel thoughtful or companionable but awkward and uneasy, and then Aysha said: ‘After all, what Hilda is doing is her own business. We are talking too much,' and they pushed back their chairs and began to move towards the door.

Hilda got up. ‘Thank you all for the lovely present. I'll see you after Christmas.' Even with the windows wide open at the top, the room was far too hot, and Christmas, more than anything, seemed distant and unreal. She felt dizzy, standing up, watching the women in their sandals and baggy trousers, their floating scarves and saris, smile at her uncertainly and leave the room.

‘I'll bring the baby in to show you,' she said.

‘That will be very nice. Goodbye.'

‘Goodbye.'

Out in the corridor she could hear them talking in low voices, their feet flapping unhurriedly towards the swing doors to the yard. She sat down at the table by the window, looking again at the heap of acid-pink baby things, her head swimming, and put her head down, trying to fight off nausea. It's the heat, she thought, I'll go home and rest, but although the sickness ebbed away and her head cleared she felt empty and disappointed. And what did you expect, she asked herself, getting to her feet again. Anya disapproves, even Alice disapproves.

With the weather so hot, Alice and Tony had taken to having breakfast and supper out in the garden, sitting with the girls at the old wooden picnic table which the previous owners of the house had left behind. Alice had strung up wires running from above the kitchen door to the fence beside the table, and was growing vines along them. Even with this shade it was still too hot to be out here at lunchtime, but first thing in the morning, with the table and breakfast things dappled with leafy shadows, it felt like a Greek café, and the children loved it.

‘Poor you,' said Alice to Tony, as he came outside in his shirt and trousers, carrying briefcase and jacket. ‘How can you work in this heat?'

‘I can't,' he said, running a hand through his thinning hair. ‘I sit at my desk and sweat drips down past my glasses.'

‘Ugh,' said Annie.

Hettie said: ‘You should have a fan.'

‘There is a fan, but once I turned it too far towards me, and do you know what happened?'

‘What?'

‘All the papers on my desk lifted into the air and went flying round the room.'

‘Did they really?' The girls were fascinated. ‘Like this,' said Annie, lifting her arms, and knocked over the milk jug.

‘Oh, Annie!' Alice ran into the kitchen and came back with a cloth. ‘It's gone
everywhere.
Mind, quick, out of the way, it's going on Daddy's trousers. Here, Tony –'

‘And then I'll have a nasty old judge after me,' said Tony, moving along the bench, and wiping the milk away. ‘I shall go into court looking all respectable, and the judge will raise his head and start sniffing, like this – sniff, sniff, sniff – and he'll say: “What is that dreadful smell of cheesy old milk? Who is responsible? Remove that man from the court room immediately! Chop his head off!”'