Keeping Secrets (39 page)

‘No … no, I haven't. I'm sorry I haven't rung, I did try this afternoon, but you were out.'

‘I was at work,' said Hilda. ‘I went back this morning.'

‘God, I didn't realise it was so soon. How was it?'

‘Fine, I think. I can hardly remember with all this noise.'

‘What's the matter with him? I thought he'd be asleep by now.'

‘Did you?' Hilda felt suddenly cross and defensive. ‘He is usually, but we haven't seen each other all day, we've been playing.' There was a pause, in which she struggled to collect herself. ‘Where are you?'

‘In Camden. I'm staying with James.'

Sam's cries were growing louder. She said quickly: ‘Could you come over?'

‘What?'

‘I said could you come over? Please?'

There was another pause. Then Stephen said: ‘I don't think so, not at the moment. Why don't I ring you back?'

‘Okay.' She was deflated. ‘Give me an hour or so, all right?'

‘Fine. Talk to you later, then. I'd better let you get on with it.'

‘Yes. Sorry.' Why was she sorry? ‘Stephen? Happy New Year.'

But he didn't hear her, and put down the phone. Hilda turned to Sam in exasperation. ‘Come here, horror.' She picked him up and he stopped crying. ‘I should think so, you'll have to learn better manners than that when I'm on the phone.' She buried her face in his neck; he smelt of talc from the bath and Lenor from his pyjamas. She nuzzled him and he began to laugh. ‘That's better. Come on, let's get you off to sleep.'

Feeding him, lying on her bed with the nightlight on, she held him close, stroking his hair. It was growing much thicker, the colour of straw but soft as feathers. ‘I do love you,' she said gently, ‘and I did miss you. Sorry I was cross.' Sam sucked peacefully, and she yawned, feeling calmer. At least Stephen had phoned, and if he had sounded tense and irritable it was probably because of Sam crying. Well, at least partly. Whatever it was, they would sort it out in a little while. And if he was staying with James he would surely be able to come over soon. Tomorrow? ‘Please,' she said aloud, with sudden longing, ‘please tomorrow.'

Sam had fallen asleep. She carried him carefully over to his cot and laid him down, avoiding the rattling bar, pulling up his duvet. Then she went quietly out of the room and sat by the telephone, preparing tomorrow's classes.

Stephen did not phone back until almost midnight. By that time Hilda had given up, had a bath and gone to bed in a fury. She was just drifting off, realising, as she pulled down the pillows, how tired she was, when she heard the phone and sprang out of bed, stumbling to answer it before Sam woke up.

‘Hello?' She switched on the desk lamp, out of breath.

‘Hilda – I'm sorry it's so late. Did I wake you?'

‘It's all right.' She pulled her sweater off the back of her desk chair. ‘What happened?'

‘I was working – I just didn't realise how late it was.'

‘Oh.' There was a silence, in which she managed to pull the sweater round her shoulders, keeping the phone to her ear, and sit down.

‘How are you? How have you been?'

‘I told you – I've had'flu. Luckily Anya was able to look after us.'

‘You sound very fed up.' It was said almost provocatively, inviting another snapping answer, bound to make things worse, and within moments of picking up the phone Hilda could feel a row brewing: she sat willing it not to happen, not after all these weeks apart.

‘Hilda?'

‘Yes?'

‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing,' she said carefully. ‘I'm still a bit sleepy. Please tell me how you are, what's been happening. How was your Christmas?'

She could hear him take a breath. ‘Actually, not very good, that's why I haven't rung. I – I did what you suggested.'

‘What do you mean? You mean you told them?'

‘Yes.' A pause. ‘It was pretty grim, to say the least.'

‘Oh, Stephen … I'm so sorry. What happened …?'

‘To put it in a nutshell, Jonathan has more or less left home and isn't speaking to me, and Miriam has given me the push. Sort of. I have a suspended sentence, apparently.'

‘Oh, Stephen …' she said again. ‘But if – I mean – can't you come over here? Come here and stay. I'll look after you.' Was that the right thing to say? If everything was over, then surely that was the obvious thing to do? And then they could – then everything … ‘Stephen?'

‘I don't think that's a very good idea. Not at the moment.'

‘But –' Didn't he want to come?

‘Please, don't make it worse.'

‘I –' She covered her mouth. Why should offering comfort make it worse? She thought dully: He's going to say he needs time to himself, I can feel it coming. And even if it's true, it feels like the beginning of the end.

‘I just feel I'd better have some time on my own. To think things out. Is that reasonable? Do you understand?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course.'

From the bedroom, a cry. She covered her ear. ‘It's just – you know, Sam. He'd like to see you, too. We're awfully …' No. Don't say it; make it sound okay or he'll never come. ‘Never mind. He's woken up, I'd better go.'

‘Are you … managing all right?'

‘Yes, fine. Don't worry. You just – sort things out.'

‘I'll be in touch, I promise.'

‘Okay, thanks. I'd better go, he's starting to yell.'

‘Bye, then, Hilda.'

‘Bye.'

She put down the phone and sat for a moment without moving, her hand on the receiver. Then she slowly got up and switched off the desk lamp. By the gleam of the nightlight through the open bedroom door she made her way back there, and picked up her baby –
her
baby; it felt just then as if he had nothing to do with Stephen.

After that, the days became full of contrasts. Hilda went back to work a different person, and for about a week was treated as such: there were excited greetings, enquiries, exclamations over photographs. After that, with astonishing speed, she began to feel as though she had never been away. Each morning she parked the car, pushed open the heavy swing doors of the main building and walked through the concourse, past the tubs of trailing house-plants, the heavy clay pots in glass cases, the students with their files and clipboards, looking at the noticeboard, getting drinks and Kit-Kats from the machine. Hilda, who had not had a coffee for months, now automatically stopped to get one, and carried it up the broad stone steps and along the corridor to her cramped little office on the first floor.

At her corner desk beside the filing cabinet she pinned up a photograph of Sam next to her timetable and sat sipping from the plastic cup, looking through the pile of notes and papers left by the woman who had covered for her. She picked up the threads of her classes again, and covered for people off with'flu; she chaired meetings to discuss curriculum development and cuts. She went to a union meeting about the threatened one-day strike and voted in favour; she interviewed applicants to run a study-skills course on Tuesday afternoons and realised with a mixture of embarrassment and relief that at least one of them found her formidable. Soon, there were moments – having lunch with her colleagues in the canteen, or coming back to her office from a class – when she realised that for an hour or more she had been so absorbed that the past six months might never have happened. There was no baby, no lover, no change – they had all slipped away like a dream, like someone else's dream, and now she was single again, working, in charge, reclaimed.

As soon as she left the building, however, all this changed again. She found herself hurrying across the car park, driving home listening absently to the news headlines on the radio, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, taut with impatience when the traffic slowed. When she arrived in the square she cursed if there was no parking space left near the house, and ran down the road with her bag of books, panting up the steps to the front door. Was he crying? Did he realise she was late? She unlocked the door with cold fingers, stepping into the dimly lit hall, calling out: ‘I'm home!'

But Sam was rarely crying, and sometimes, even before she reached the front door, she could hear Anya on the piano, playing to him as he lay on the rug by the fireguard. ‘Jack and Jill went
up
ze hill to
fetch
a pail of
vater!
' Her accent was heavier in English nursery rhymes than it ever was in speech, but her voice, from all the years in the choir, was strong and clear; it made Hilda want to go back to rehearsals again.

‘So. Here is Mummy.' Anya came out into the hall, holding the door to her sitting room wide. ‘Come in, sit down, have a cup of tea.'

Down on his rug Sam, chewing a teething ring, turned his head to look up at Hilda curiously.

‘Baby …' She wanted to swoop him up and smother him in kisses. Instead, hearing him begin to pant and whimper like a Pavlov puppy – half-past five, time for milk – she sat on one of Anya's old armchairs, still in her coat, and picked him up for his feed, kissing him surreptitiously when Anya went out to the kitchen, slipping a finger to be held in his plump little hand, stroking his forehead, his cheek, his ears. He gazed up at her with wide blue eyes – whose eyes? Hers were brown, Stephen's grey, where had he got this deep, glorious blue? From time to time he broke off to watch one of the cats leap softly off the top of the piano, or stretch and yawn on the back of the sofa, and follow Anya out to the kitchen, miaowing.

‘They know it's tea time when you come home.' Anya came back, carrying the beaten metal tray, with cups and biscuits.

‘Like Sam.' Hilda looked up at her, holding him close. ‘How has he been?'

‘He has been wonderful. We have been for a walk to the park, and seen the ducks, haven't we, Sam? And he has had a good sleep this afternoon. I think perhaps his teeth are giving him some trouble, sometimes he is fretful …'

Hilda felt a little twist of anxiety. How fretful? Did that mean howling, made light of by Anya? ‘It is quite normal,' Anya said calmly, and set down a cup of tea on the table next to the armchair. ‘How was your day today?'

Hilda yawned. ‘Fine. Busy. I can't remember.' She sipped her tea, asking casually: ‘Was there any post?'

It was as though a wall had been built between home and work, neatly dividing her day so that each part was lived by two different people, each more or less incomprehensible to the other. Perhaps, if that had been all she now expected of life – to teach and to look after Sam – she would have grown used to switching on and switching off at the beginning and end of each day. But it was not all, even if she had once thought it would be, and she was not a robot. What connected her two lives were the sudden, unexpected, piercing moments of longing for Stephen.

At college, everyone on the staff knew her situation – it wasn't like the moment of discovery in the last class of the summer with her Asian students, who now studiously avoided all mention of a father when they admired the photos of Sam in her arms, or in his bouncing chair. Nor was it like being in hospital, falsely addressed as Mrs King. Still, it was painful to have to field questions, however well intentioned, over the canteen table or from people dropping into the office: how was Stephen, did he manage to get down often, had he been with her at the birth; was he – asked on Friday afternoons – coming down this weekend? She knew that none of the people asking all this held any moral views about her life – at least, they did not appear to. They asked out of interest, and friendship, and almost certainly did not want to know more, or to think about what her day-to-day life was really like. Perhaps, deep down, one or two did disapprove, those who were married themselves, with children, but she refused to let it worry her – it was, after all none of their business. And answering their kind, interested questions would not have been a problem if she had known, as she seemed to know in the old days, where she and Stephen were going. Now she knew nothing, she was cut off, confused and unhappy.

At times like this, calmly telling people that Stephen hadn't managed to be with her when Sam was born, or wasn't, actually, coming down this weekend, she felt angry and frustrated and tearful, though she hoped that no one would ever have guessed it, and that they barely noticed her smooth change of subject to their own lives, their own preoccupations. At times like this she would have given anything to look up and see him, suddenly, miraculously, framed in a doorway, holding out his hand, his suitcase in the other, coming to stay.

At college, such moments passed quickly: she was too busy to dwell on them. At home, the longing for him was more painful and more acute, particularly so when she took Sam out of Anya's warm sitting room, with its clutter of books and cats and music, and up the stairs to their own little flat at the top. She could hear Anya switch on the television almost as soon as they left – Romania's revelations of misery and brutality were still in the headlines and, anyway, the television news had become an addiction for Anya now, like
Neighbours
and
Brookside.
After a long day, with Sam and her bag to hump up the two floors, Hilda was exhausted when she reached the top. If she had not fed him downstairs, she did so straight away; more often, she plonked her bag on the sofa and him on his playmat and felt, for a few minutes, totally disoriented.

There was no letter from Stephen, and it was, in truth, the hope of one, as well as the longing to see Sam again, that had her racing up the front steps each evening. The telephone sat silent on the desk – why wasn't it ringing when she came in, why wasn't Stephen here, waiting to surprise her? For those first few moments, each homecoming was an endurance. Then she knelt down on the floor beside Sam, and kissed and cuddled and played with him, before she ran his bath – and often one for both of them, with lashings of baby bubbles – and the evening began to take on its own shape and purpose.